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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 




UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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31 



FIVE PROBLEMS OF STATE AND 
RELIGION. 



FIVE PROBLEMS 



OF 



STATE AND RELIGION. 



BY 



WILL C. WOOD, A.M., 

Late Pastor at Wenham, Mass. 



BOSTON: 
HENRY HOYT, PUBLISHER, 

1877. 






Copyright, 

1877, 
By Henry Hoyt. 



Stereotyped and Printed by 

Rand, Avery, and Company, 

iij Fra7ikliii Street, 

Boston . 



" Our fathers' God, from out whose hand 
The centuries fall like grains of sandj 
We meet to-day, united, free, 
And loyal to our land and thee, 
To thank thee for the era done, 
And trust thee for the opening one. 

Oh ! make thou us, through centuries long, 
In peace secure, and justice strong; 
Around our gifts of freedom draw 
The safeguard of thy righteous law ; 
And, cast in some diviner mould, 
Let the new cycle shame the old." 

Whittier's Centennial Hymm. 



" The American State recognizes only the catholic religion. It eschews all sec- 
tarianism. The State conforms to what each holds that is catholic, that is always and 
everywhere religJton ; and whatever is not catholic it leaves as outside of its province, 
to live or die, according to its own inherent vitality, or want of vitality. The State 
conscience is catholic, not sectarian." — O. A. Brownson. 

" If ever our liberties perish, it will be by the explosion of the volcanic power ot 
the European and American populace, and foreign influence, and American dema- 
gogues in bad alliance, who will ride in the whirlwind, and direct the storm. This, I 
am aware, is strong language : but strong language is needed ; for this giant nation 
sleepeth, and must be awaked." " It is said again, 'The conspiracy, if real, to over- 
throw our republic by immigration and a foreign religion, is impotent and chimerical, — 
a thing which cannot be done.' Indeed ! Is our republic, then, so mature, and solid, 
and strong, as to bid defiance to peril ? Our wisest men have regarded its preservation, 
when formed of native citizens only, as an experiment, urged on by high hopes indeed 
and strenuous efforts, but amid stupendous difficulties, and not yet consummated ; 
and, though hitherto our ship has weathered every storm, has it been accomplished 
with such ease and safety as to justify the proud contempt of greater dangers?" — 
Lyman Beecher, 1835. 



PREFATORY. 



These essays, which have appeared in various pubhc prints,^ are 
now, for the first time, pubhshed in a collected form. It is believed 
the discussions are timely, and needful to the republic. Whatever 
merit these essays may have will be found to consist in this, — that 
they are, so far as is known to the writer, the first discussion of these 
subjects on the basis of iiaUtral religion^ on which alone, in a mixed 
and free State, any satisfactory results can be gained. It has been 
the fault of even excellent works on this subject, that they start with 
some assumption unwarranted or challenged in a free mixed State ; as, 
that " This is a Protestant country ; " or, " The Bible is the word of 
God." Starting with such assumptions, the discussion, however valu- 
able in portions, must needs be, as a whole, unsatisfactory. By such 
unsuccessful arguments, men's inner sense, that there is valid ground 
for a religious service in the schools, has been disappointed. In the 
whole course of the present argument it is assumed that we live in a 
free mixed State; and the Bible is not here referred to as the book 
of God, but only (which can by none be denied) that it is a book about 
God, and, to the European and American mind, the best book about 
God. The reader will be in a better state to appreciate the force of 
the argument throughout, if he will bear in mind that religion, as used 
in these essays, means natural religion^ and not revealed religion^ and 
if he observes that the Scriptures and Scripture personages, even he 
who is called Lord, are referred to only as natural religion may prop- 
erly take account of them. On this plane alone, it is believed, can a just 
and permanent settlement of these important and vexed questions be 
reached, in our country, among what is confessedly a free people, each 
of whom is protected in the full exercise of his personal religion. 

1 Church Union, Congregationallst, Watchman. 



viii PREFATORY. 



As the writer has been told that this argument strengthens as it 
advances, he begs suspension of judgment till the final pages on the 
part of any who may commence to read in the spirit of dissent. 'Tis 
a summary but superficial way to dispose of the Fourth Discussion 
— the main one, perhaps — in this volume by exclaiming, "Intoler- 
ance, sectarianism ! " Deep subjects are not settled by shallow 
clamors. This discussion, though doubtless not faultless, is the fruit 
of patient thought. The first four essays in that discussion comprise 
the positive grounds for reading the Scriptures in public schools ; the 
next three essays meet opposing lines of thought ; the next essay sur- 
veys the results of withdrawing the Bible ; and the final essay is reca- 
pitulatory, corroboratory, and also expository of the Manual of Morals. 
The writer will be gratified if the remark of a Boston editor on one of 
these essays shall, to the candid and thoughtful, seem to apply to the 
whole, — " It subsoils the subject." 

Our theme — not the connection of State and Church, but of the State 
and Religion — finds fit emblem in the design so skilfully set by the 
artist on our cover, — morning beam of our whole argument, — the 
Crown and the Sceptre, national authority possessed and national 
power wielded^- reposing, for enlightenment and glory, under the 
full radiance of Heaven. 

'"'■ Laus Deo,'''' after the fashion of Handel, would we write in our 
margin, if this volume might prove a CaTnpus Martins {not martial 
camp, good reader), — a place of meeting and agreement of the citi- 
zens of the republic. We trust that the motive of our heart has been 
to bring all good men speedily upon common ground on these ques- 
tions which threaten to disturb our peace, to " dwell together in 
unity ; " "that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, in all godhness 
and honesty, for this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our 
Saviour." 

With these words, these discussions, with all their faults, are by 
the writer given to his countrymen, especially to thoughtful men, 
leaders of public opinion, with the hope that they may commend them- 
selves to their candid judgment as the just and sound and safe basis 
on which — with the union and approbation of all good men, of what- 
ever rehgious name — the American State may build itself up for a 
thousand years, harmoniously, righteously, in the favor of God. " Sicut 
patribus, sit Deus nobis!''' Will C. Wood. 

West Roxbury, Sept. i, 1877. 



CONTENTS. 



THE STATE AND THE SABBATH. 

I. The Sabbath the Benefactor of the State • • . i 
II. The God of the Sabbath a Benefactor to the State . 45 

THE STATE AND TEMPLES. 

Taxing God's House • 57 

THE STATE AND THE CHURCH . . . . . .65 

THE STATE SCHOOLS AND RELIGION. 

I. Recognition of God in Public Education by reading the 

Bible 115 

II. God in the Nation; therefore in Public Education . 128 

III. Mother and Child; Bible and School 143 

IV. Free America born of the Bible 158 

V. The Bible in Public Schools, and the Religionists . 181 

VI. State Schools and Church Schools 198 

VII. The "English" and the "Douai" 224 

VIII. The Imperial Exile 286 

IX. The Bible and the Manual of Morals .... 300 

THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 

Divine Service; Chaplain; only one Chaplain . . . 325 



THE STATE AND THE SABBATH. 



THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR 
OF THE STATE. 



[Unofficial.] 

International Exhibition, Philadelphia, 

May 26, 1876. 

Rev. Will C. Wood. 

Dear Sir, — The original vote of the United-States Centennial Commis- 
sion, referring to the Sunday question, was taken two years ago, and was to 
this effect : — 

The Exhibition shall be open from nine o'clock in the morning until six 
o'clock in the evening, daily, except Sunday. 

Subsequently, about three months ago, the Executive Committee of the 
Commission affirmed the first vote. Still later, in April last, the Commission 
voted squarely on the question, *' Shall the Exhibition be open on Sunday .'"' 
and decided in the negative by a vote of 29 to 9. The last vote was by 
S-.ates, each State having one vote. 

Yours very respectfully, 

E. Lewis Moore. 

Monday, May 15, the following resolutions were passed by 
the evangelical ministers of Boston and vicinity, numbering 
nearly four hundred : — • 

" Resolved, That we most heartily approve the action of the Centennial 
Commissioners in closing the Exhibition and grounds on the Lord's Day, 
and that we fervently hope they will maintain the American idea of the 
Christian Sabbath by adhering most firmly to their wise decision. 

" Resolved, That the secretary of the meeting transmit by telegraph the 
above resolution to Gen. Hawley, Chairman of the Commissioners, as the 
unanimous expression, by rising vote, of the Evangelical Ministers' Associa- 
tion of Boston and vicinity, in large attendance, this day at noon." 

The action of these men is sound. It is fitting that this 



2 THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 

commission of men in a religious land, it is fitting that these 
ministers of public virtue and patriotic spirit, should speak 
and act so decidedly in regard to Sabbath observance at our 
nation's Centennial. 

Immortal are those words of Gen. Joseph Russell Hawley, 
worthy to be recalled with distinguished honor a hundred years 
hence, and not only to shine in letters of transient glory amid 
the coruscations of the p3T0technic display, but to be carved in 
the enduring marble pedestal of the statue of the President 
of the First Centennial Exhibition of the Republic, to show the 
generations to come that the heroes of the early age were fear- 
less in the field, yet God-fearing, and wise in counsel : " Be- 
fore God, I AM AFRAID TO OPEN THE EXHIBITION-GATES ON 

THE Sabbath." The noble words of Corliss^ also, will go down 
with equal honor, to posterity with the memory of his magnifi- 
cent engine : " My opinion on that point is very decided, and 
I am very free to express it. All the good that would be 
accomplished by this grand Exhibition will be neutralized if it 
is opened on Sunday, and it would better never have been. 
I am ready to run at night, or at any hour, for the benefit of 
those who do not find it convenient to attend during the day, 
and I would favor a reduction in the rates of admission for 
such ; but under no circumstances would I consent to have it 
run on Sunday." ^ 

Montalembert said, in his report to the French Parliament in 
1850, "We need not hesitate to place in the front rank of our 
dangers and our faults the public profanation of the Sabbath.'' 
In this Centennial time of hope, we desire to avoid the dangers 
of our second century by laying still broader our foundations 
as state and nation on principles which are divine and eternal. 
That desire is the occasion of this fresh presentation of the. 
Sabbath question in an unaccustomed form, — an appeal to the 
State. The argument in its whole course applies so powerfully 
to the individual, that we trust it may not be overlooked that 
the drift of the argument which follows is the demonstration of 
the obligations of the corporate State to the day of rest. 

1 Commissioner Corliss of Rhode Island. 



THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 3 

An ingenious writer, with whom we used to walk under the 
noble elms of Harvard, has lately enriched the world by a dis- 
course on " Duty considered as Due-ty." He sets forth his 
germ idea thus: " Duty is nothing else than due-ty; that which 
is due ; that which one being owes to another for something that 
has been received."^ 

In this thought of benefits received we will consider the fact 
that the State (the State as well as the individual) has a " due- 
ty " to the Sabbath, — a duty as imperative in its obligation, 
and as fruitful of good in its observance, as the duty of the 
individual, since whatever blesses her citizens blesses her, and 
becomes a reason — even where they are oblivious of the good 
received or possible — that she, in her sovereignty over them, 
should honor, cherish, and defend the Benefactor, even against 
all recusants, and thus not only discharge an obligation, but, 
perchance, give wider scope and channel to those benefactions 
in time to come. 

The first of these essays will consider the " due-ty " of the 
State to the Sahhath : the second will consider the " due-ty " 
of the State to the God of the Sabbath. The first will consid- 
er the Sabbath without reference to its origin, as an impersonal 
thing, an institution : the second will meditate on the Sabbath 
as a benefit which can be traced to a personal Benefactor. The 
first paper is, " The Sabbath the Benefactor of the State ; " the 
second, "The God of the Sabbath the Benefactor of the State." 

THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 

This title contains several elementary ideas. The State, it 
is conceived, and not merely the individual, has a "due-ty" to 
the Sabbath. 

States, as well as individ-uals, may have benefactors. 

"In August, 1824, Lafayette came to the United States as the 
guest of the nation whose independence he had assisted in 
gaining with his blood and his fortune. He visited each of the 
twenty-four States, and was everywhere received with enthusiastic 
greetings of gratitude and joy. He remained in the country a 

1 Rev. Myron A. Munson. 



4 THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 

little more than a year ; and, when ready to return, the President 
placed at his disposal a frigate, named, in compliment to him, 
' The Brandywine,' to carry him back to France. Congress still 
fmther manifested their appreciation of his services by voting 
him a township and two hundred thousand dollars." The State 
considered this man a benefactor, and with good reason ; for, 
in 1777, Lafayette, a wealthy nobleman, not yet twenty years old, 
giving up the ease and elegance of his home, fitted out a vessel 
at his own expense, and crossed the ocean to offer his services 
to the Americans in their struggle for independence, asking 
only to serve as a volunteer, and without pay. The same 
national gratitude was felt toward De Kalb the Prussian, and 
Pulaski and Kosciusko the Poles. 

States, then, may have benefactors, and may be grateful to 
them. 

In the title, also, is contained the thought, that ^ 

The State may regard as a benefactor not only a person, hut a 
beneficent institution ; a day which, like the Sabbath, constantly 
recurs, bringing the boon of rest. 

Suppose that that were done by a man which is done by the 

Sabbath : would he not be deemed a benefactor ? The shops are 

shut ; the wharves are silent ; the coal-miner is allowed to spend 

a day with his family in fresh green fields, under blue sky; the 

merchant's brain is set free from the cares of trade ; the cotter 

rejoices in his "Saturday night;" the hall of legislation is 

closed, and the court-room : all men give up toil and moil ; and 

myriad places are thrown open, where the soul is refreshed with 

glimpses 

" Through open vistas into heaven." 

This is done not one day, but two and fifty times a year. 
This day, this instituted day, constantly abiding in our civiliza- 
tion, and established in it like Jacob's well in Samaria's fields, 
welling forth as pure waters as in bygone millenniums, — is not 
this day a benefactor ? Is it difficult to personify it ? 

The old Greeks would have apotheosized it. The old Greek 
sculptors would have delighted to carve the figure which should 
fitly represent Sabbath Benefactor. It should be of purest Parian 



THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 5 

marble, that it might emblem the serenity of the holy day of rest. 
It should be lofty, and loftily placed, like Minerva's statue, that 
it might look in benediction on all the city roofs and country 
fields. It should be with benignant yet holy countenance, as of 
a divine friend. It should be in "station," as if "new lighted" 
"from above, pure, peaceable, full of good fruits, without par- 
tiality;" yet it should stand as if come to abide. Its drapery 
should be moved by the airs of heaven. One hand should be 
extended as in act to shed abroad a holy calm over land and 
sea, giving repose to all labor; while the other should point 
upward and forward as if to bespeak the Creator's benediction 
which she came to bring to his creatures, and to remind that her 
most gracious service is to usher man into God's presence and 
rest. So imaged in white marble, the Sabbath might engage 
our thought, even if it did not, as it might to the Greek, bow the 
knee. But, even without the marble image of the sculptor, is it 
difficult for the imagination to behold the benignant and divine 
figure of Sabbath Benefactor ? 

The idea is also wrapped up in the title, that the Sabbath is 
a benefactor independe7itly of its origin. No matter whence it 
came : if this day has brought mental and physical repose and 
prosperity to whole peoples, it is a benefactor. It may have 
come from China, like the silk manufacture ; it may have had its 
origin from Central Asia, like the horse ; it may have come from 
Europe, like the apple ; it may have been derived from Greece, 
like our culture of the beautiful ; or from Israel, like the sacred 
books of the Occident ; or from Great Britain, like Magna 
Charta : whencesoever sprung, it is a benefactor, if it can be 
shown to be unspeakable in the value and extent of its benefi- 
cent influences. If it be " earth-born," it is a benefactor ; if it 
be "heaven-descended," it is a benefactor. Its lofty place as 
benefactor does not depend on its origin. If it can be shown 
that it does for man, for mankind, for a 7iation^ what nothing 
else can do for them, then the State may well feel that she has a 
duty to perform, — to preserve to the day its integrity and sanc- 
tity, by virtue of which it has been and will be perennial in its 
benefactions to nations as well as to individuals. 



6 THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE, 

This paper will aim to set forth the benefactions of the Sab- 
bath to the State and her citizens, wherever her benignant 
mission has been accepted. 

A preliminary word needs to be spoken in answer to a ques- 
tion which naturally suggests itself as to the necessity, the 
essential value, of the supposed benefactions of the Sabbath. 
Are these benefits so essential, when Greece and Rome could 
do without them ? 

The inquiry may arise in a reflecting mind. How is it, if the 
Sabbath be so necessary, and even essential to the well-being 
of man, his rest of body and mind, that the ancients could have 
dispensed with it, and yet have displayed such remarkable vigor 
both of body and mind ? The facts in connection with this sub- 
ject may, perhaps, be of great interest. 

It may be said, to begin with, that it is difficult to compare a 
present state of things, in which there are undoubted improve- 
ments, with a past state, obscured by the gathered mists of many 
years, in which those improvements did not exist : it is much 
easier to compare what we are with the improvements with 
what we should be without them. The amelioration of man- 
kind by laws and institutions is not always striking, even where 
a thoughtful mind must estimate it as considerable, and even 
unspeakable. The closing of stores on Saturday afternoon 
brings great refreshment. But does not the question always 
recur at these innovations, " Did not they get along well enough 
in the days before us ? " So with the stage-coach: as you read 
history up to the year 1825, does it often strike one that their 
locomotion was limited in facilities ? Occasionally only we are 
struck with the failure, from slow travelling, of some personage 
to reach a dying friend. So, before the days of steamboats, a 
casual glance does not reveal but that their travel by water was 
satisfactorily rapid. The same principle applies in the matter 
of stoves in dwellings, and furnaces in churches. Only occa- 
sionally, when we hear of the communion-wine frozen in the 
chalice, do we estimate the difference between then and now. 
Very evident is it, that our modern system of medicine is un- 
speakable in its benefits ; yet what superficial reader oiten thinks 



THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 7 

but that people in the past lived just as long, were just as well, 
and recovered from sickness just as soon, as we ? How few of 
us, by historical or traditionary comparison, without research, 
could say that.the sick did not fare as well before as since the 
discovery of ether ? The right way to argue these cases, it is 
evident, is, not to compare ourselves with the benefits and a 
dimly known past without them, but to compare ourselves with 
them and ourselves without them. 

So with the Sabbath. Even though we had no evidence that 
the Greeks and Romans were inferior in health and spiritual 
culture without the day, even though it were not known that 
they had imperfect substitutes for it, still, by comparison of our- 
selves with it, and ourselves without it, we are prepared to say 
confidently, that they must have lost much in having no Sabbath, 
both in health and morals. This is all which need be said to 
prevent any objection from this quarter. 

But now, on the positive side, the evidence is ample and ex- 
ceedingly interesting, that the Greeks and Romans did, by the 
movings of tired and restless nature, contrive some poor sub- 
stitutes for the septenary day of rest. Many of the ancient and 
modern pagan nations have a day more or less devoted to rest 
and worship. The Saracens and Mohammedans keep Friday ; 
the inhabitants of Guinea, Tuesday. The Chinese, it is said, 
once kept the seventh day. 

But their great substitute for the Sabbath was the festivals. 
These were frequent. Lucius Accius informs us that the Greeks. 
in town and country celebrated the Saturnalia. " The manner 
in which all ^VlqXiq, fericB were kept," says one of the best writers 
on Greek and Roman antiquities, "bears great analogy to our 
Sunday. The most serious and solemn seem to have been the 
fer-ice, imperatives ; but all the others were generally attended by 
rejoicings and feastings. All kinds of business, especially law- 
suits, were suspended during the public fcrice, as they were con- 
sidered to pollute the sacred season." Such was the ancient 
groping for God's gift of the sacred day of rest. 

The most thoughtful among the Greeks and Romans per- 
ceived the important effect of these days of rest. They eulor- 



8 THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 

gized them. They even go so far as to call them the gift of 
the gods. " Seneca applauds the holidays of heathendom as a 
wise appointment of legislators for the necessary attempering 
of human labor." Cicero commends festival days. Plato, in a 
remarkable passage, extols festivals as the ''''gift of the gods for 
the relief of toil-doomed man. ' ' 

But it may be thought that these festivals must have recurred 
so seldom, as in no way to compensate for lack of the Sabbath, 
and in no way to show the demand for it. 

Under the auspices of the Genevan Societe d'Utilite Pu- 
blique, a valuable little volume was issued, entitled " Le Repos 
Hebdomadaire."^ In the Appendix, Rabaud makes some inter- 
esting statements as to the number of the ancient festivals. 
He reminds us of the days of the Grecian games, — Olympic, 
Pythian, Isthmian, and Nemean, — and then adds this remarka- 
ble statement, that, in the Roman calendar, the fixed and regu- 
lar festivals alone numbered forty-seven? Claudius reduced the 
number to thirty-seven. Observe that there were seven in the 
month of February. This unequal distribution is sufficient to 
condemn their system in comparison with our regular appoint- 
ment of time for labor and holy rest. Yet the great number of 
the days shows that man's nature craves a large number of days 
of rest, inasmuch as the Romans had as many regular festival 
days, within five, as we have Sabbaths in the year.^ 

The argument for the necessity of the Sabbath is therefore 
advanced, and not retarded, by the consideration that the 
Greeks and Romans were without it, but that they had a poor 
yet somewhat satisfactory substitute for it, on which they set 
such value as to call it " the gift of the gods for the relief of toil- 
burdened 7?tanJ' 

The raai-n argument, then, can advance unimpeded, nay, with 

1 Camille and Edouard Rabaud, 1870. 

2 " Three in January, seven in F'ebruary, five in March, five in April, five in May, five in 
June, five in July, three in August, three in September, two in October, two in November, 
two in December: total, fort^'-seven." " Most of these festivals lasted several days, as high 
as fifteen ; and they certainly offered a full equivalent for our fifty-two dominical seasons." 

3 See also Graecia Feriata, in six books, Johannes Meursius ; also the chapter. Weekly 
Repose among Ancient Nations other than the Hebrews, in another volume, Repos Hebdom« 
adaire, by Luclen Jottrand, also issued by the Genevan Society of Public Utility. 

i 



THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE, 9 

an impetus forward, from the preceding considerations, to 
evince the benefactions of the Sabbath. 

I. THE SABBATH IS A BENEFACTOR TO THE STATE IN BESTOW- 
ING PHYSICAL REST UPON HER CITIZENS. 

In 1832 the British House of Commons appointed a com- 
mittee to investigate the effects of laboring seven days in a 
week, compared with those of laboring only six, and resting one. 
*rhat committee consisted of Sir Andrew Agnew, Sir Robert 
Peel, Sir Robert Inglis, Sir Thomas Baring, Sir George Mur- 
ray, Fowell Buxton, Lord Morpeth, Lord Ashley, Lord Viscount 
Sandon, and twenty other members of Parliament. They ex- 
amined a great number of witnesses, of various professions and 
employments. Among them was John Richard Farre, M.D., of 
London, of whom they speak as " an acute and experienced 
physician." The following is his testimony : — 

" I have practised as a physician between thirty and forty 
years ; and during the early part of my life, as the physician of 
a public medical institution, I had charge of the poor in one of 
the most populous districts of London. I have had occasion 
to observe the effect of the observance and non-observance of 
the seventh day of rest during the time. .1 have been in the 
habit, during a great many years, of considering the itses of the 
Sabbath, and of observing its abuses. The abuses are chiefly 
manifested in labor and dissipation. Its use, medically speak- 
ing, is that of a day of rest. 

" As a day of rest, I view it as a day of compensation for the 
inadequate restorative power of the body under continued labor 
and excitement. A physician always has respect to the preser- 
vation of the restorative power, because, if once this be lost, 
his healing office is at an end. A physician is anxious to pre- 
serve the balance of circulation as necessary to the restorative 
power of the body. The ordinary exertions of man run down 
the circulation every day of his life ; and the first general law 
of nature by which God (who is not only the giver, but also the 
preserver and sustainer, of life) prevents man from destroying 
himself is the alternating of day and night, that repose may 



10 THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 

succeed action. But although the night apparently equalizes 
the circulation, yet it does not sufficiently restore its balance 
for the attainment of a long life. Hence one day in seven, by 
the bounty of Providence, is thrown in as a day of compensa- 
tion, to perfect by its repose the animal system. 

"Take that fine animal the horse, and work him to the full 
extent of his powers every day in the week, or give him rest 
one day in seven, and you will soon perceive, by the superior 
vigor with which he performs his functions on the other six 
days, that this is necessary to his well-being. Man, possessing 
a superior nature, is borne along by the very vigor of his mind, 
so that the injury of continued diurnal exertion and excitement 
on his animal system is not so immediately apparent as it is in 
the brute ; but in the long-run he breaks down more suddenly. 
It abridges the length of his life, and that vigor of his old age, 
which, as to mere animal power, ought to be the object of his 
preservation. 

" I consider, therefore, that, in the bountiful provision of Prov- 
idence for the preservation of human life, the sabbatical ap- 
pointment is not, as it has been sometimes theologically viewed, 
simply a precept partaking of the nature of a political institu- 
tion, but that it is to be numbered amongst the natural duties, 
if the preservation of life be admitted to be a duty, and the 
premature destruction of it a suicidal act. This is simply 
said as a physician, and without reference at all to the theologi- 
cal question. But, if you consider further the proper effect of 
real Christianity, — namely, peace of mind, confiding trust in 
God, and good-will to men, — you will perceive in this source 
of renewed vigor to the mind, and through the mind to the 
body, an additional spring of life imparted from this higher use 
of the Sabbath as a holy rest." 

Dr. Farre's testimony was unanimously indorsed by the New- 
Haven Medical Association. 

'' At a regular meeting of the New-Haven Medical Associa- 
tion, composed of twenty-five physicians, among whom were the 
professors of the medical college, the following questions were 
considered : — 



THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE, ii 

" I. Is the position taken by Dr. Farre in his testimony before 
the committee of the British House of Commons, in your view, 
correct ? 

"2. Will men who labor but six days in a week be more 
healthy, and live longer, other things being equal, than those 
who labor seven ? 

"3. Will they do more work, and do it in a better manner? 

" The vote on the above was unaniinoiisly in the affirmative. 
" (Signed) " Eli Ives, Chairman. 

"Pliny A. Jewett, Clerk.^^ 

Dr. Rush of Philadelphia says, " If there were no hereafter, 
individuals and societies would be great gainers by attending 
public worship. Rest from labor in the house of God winds up 
the machine of the soul and body better than any thing else, and 
thereby invigorates it for the labors and duties of another 
week." 

Ebenezer Alden, M.D., of Massachusetts, asserts, " Unneces- 
sary labor on the Sabbath is a physical sin., the transgressing 
of z. physical law., — a law to which a penalty is attached, a pen- 
alty which cannot be evaded. Such is my opinion ; and such, 
I apprehend, will be found to be substantially the opinion of 
every reflecting and well-educated physician." 

In 1839 a committee was appointed in the legislature of 
Pennsylvania, who made a report with regard to the employment 
of laborers on their canals. In that report they say, in refer- 
ence to those who had petitioned against the employment of 
the workmen on the Sabbath, " They assert, as the result of 
their experience, that both man and beast can do more work 
by resting one day in seven than by working the whole seven." 

They then add, " Your committee feel free to confess that 
their own experience., as business-men, farmers, or legislators, cor- 
responds with this assertion." 

" A gentleman from Vermont, who was in the habit of driving 
his horses twelve miles a day, seven days in the week, after- 
wards changed his practice, and drove them but six days, 
allowing them to rest one. He then found, that, with the same 



12 THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 

keeping, he could drive them fifteen miles a day, and preserve 
them in as good order as before ; so that a man may rest on 
the Sabbath, and let his horses rest, yet promote the benefit of 
both, and be in all respects the gainer." This is doubtless the 
universal result of this experiment on man and beast. " A 
number of men started from Ohio with droves of cattle for 
Philadelphia. They had often been before, and had been 
accustomed to drive on the Sabbath as on other days. One 
had now changed his views as to the propriety of travelling on 
that day. On Saturday he inquired for pastures. His associ- 
ates wondered that so shrewd a man should think of consuming 
so great a portion of his profits by stopping with such a drove 
the whole day. He stopped, however, and kept the Sabbath. 
They, thinking that they could not afford to do so, went on. 
On Monday he started again. In the course of the week he 
passed them, arrived first in the market, and sold his cattle to 
great advantage. So impressed were the others with the bene- 
fits of thus keeping the Sabbath, that they afterwards followed 
his example." 

" Two neighbors in the State of New York, each with a drove 
of sheep, started on the same day for a distant market. One 
started several hours before the other, and travelled uniformly 
every day. The other rested every Sabbath ; yet he arrived at 
the market first, with his flock in a better condition than that of 
the other. In giving an account of it, he said that he drove his 
sheep on Monday about seventeen miles, on Tuesday not over 
sixteen, and so lessening each day, till on Saturday he drove 
them only about eleven miles ; but on Monday, after resting on 
the Sabbath, they would travel again seventeen miles ; and so 
on each week. But his neighbor's sheep, which were not allowed 
to rest on the Sabbath, before they arrived at the market could 
not travel, without injury, more than six or eight miles a day." 

" The experiment was tried on a hundred and twenty horses. 
They were employed, for years, seven days in a week ; but they 
became unhealthy, and finally died so fast, that the owner thought 
it too expensive, and put them on a six-days' arrangement. After 
this he was not obliged to replenish them one-fourth part as 



THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE, 13 

often as before. Instead of sinking continually, his horses came 
up again, and lived years longer than they could have done on 
the other plan," 

A livery-stable keeper who had kept no Sabbath proposed to 
make a change. "I had advertisements struck off and posted up, 
saying that my stable would not be opened on the Sabbath. At 
first some fell off, but others liked it. I began to fill up ; and my 
business, on the whole, was quite as profitable as before. One 
thing was very remarkable : I had been at an exjDense before, 
upon an average, for a number of years, of from three to four 
hundred dollars, on account of the lameness and sickness of 
horses ; but afterwards these expenses were not ten dollars a 
year." 

"In a large flouring establishment, the men worked, for a 
number of years, seven days in a week. The superintendent 
was then changed. He ordered the men to stop the works at 
eleven o'clock on Saturday night, and not to start them until 
one o'clock on Monday morning; thus allowing a full Sabbath 
every week. And the same men during the year actually ground 
fifty thousand bushels more than had ever been ground in a 
single year in that establishment. The men — having been per- 
mitted to cleanse themselves, put on their best apparel, rest 
from worldly business, go with their families to the house of 
God, and devote the Sabbath to its appropriate duties — were 
more healthy, moral, punctual, and diligent. They lost less time 
in drinking, dissipation, and quarrels. They were more clear- 
headed and whole-hearted, knew better how to do things, and 
were more disposed to do them in the right way." 

"Two thousand men in England were employed, for years, 
seven days a week. To render them contented in giving up 
their right to the Sabbath as a day of rest, that birthright of the 
humait family^ they paid them double wages on that day, — eight 
days' wages for seven days' work. But they could not keep them 
healthy, nor make them moral. Things went badly ; and they 
changed their course, — employed the workmen only six days 
a week, and allowed them to rest on the Sabbath. The conse- 
quence was, that they did more work than ever before. This, 



14 THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 

the superintendent said, was owing to two causes, — the demoral- 
ization of the people Mn6.er the first system, and their exhaustion 
of bodily strength^ which was visible to the most casual observer." 

Henry R. Schoolcraft gives an account of an expedition which 
he made with twenty men to examine the Upper Mississippi in 
the summer of 1830. He went on another tour in 1832. He 
says, " No Sabbath Day was employed in travelling. It was laid 
down as a principle to rest on that day ; and wherever it over- 
took us, whether on the land or on the water, the men knew 
that their labor would cease, and that the day would be given 
them for rest. It may perhaps be thought that the giving up of 
one-seventh part of the whole time employed on a public expe- 
dition in a very remote region, and with many men to subsist, 
must have, in this ratio, increased the time devoted to the route. 
But the result was far otherwise. The time devoted to recruit 
the men not only gave the surgeon of the party an opportunity 
to heal up the bruises and chafings they complained of, but it 
replenished them with strength. They commenced the weekly 
labor with renewed rest; and this rest was, in a measure, kept 
up by reflection that the ensuing Sabbath would be a day of 
rest. It was found by computing the whole route, and compar- 
ing the time employed with that which had been devoted on 
similar routes in that part of the world, that an equal space had 
been gone over in less time than it had ever been known to be 
performed by loaded canoes or (as the fact is) by light canoes 
before." 

" No fewer than six hundred and forty-one medical men of 
London, including Dr. Farre, subscribed a petition to Parlia- 
ment against the opening of the Crystal Palace for profit on 
Sundays, containing the following sentence : ' Your petitioners, 
from their acquaintance with the laboring-classes and with the 
laws which regulate the human economy, are convinced that a 
seventh day of rest, instituted by God, and coeval with the 
existence of man, is essential to the bodily health and mental 
vigor of man in every station of life.'" "Many men on the 
other side of the Atlantic," says Gilfillan, " of whom we name 
only Drs. Warren of Boston, Smith of New York, Harrison and 



THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 15 

Mussey of the Ohio Medical College, and Alden of Massachu- 
setts, are equally decided in entertaining the same views. We 
must content ourselves with the striking words of Dr. Mussey, 
professor of surgery in the above-mentioned institution, who 
afifirms, that, 'under the due observance of the Sabbath, life 
would, on the average, be prolonged more than one-seventh of its 
whole period ; that is, more than seven years in fifty.'' " 

Thoughtless people have admired the Parisian Sabbath. 

" A Paris Sunday," says Russell S. Cook, Corresponding 
Secretary New- York Sabbath Committee, " has become pro-, 
verbial for its godlessness. Passing along its clean and beau- 
tiful streets, you find the cafes and restaurants crowded with 
men, taking their morning meal, and reading the newspapers of 
the day. Cries of fruit-dealers and street venders are every- 
where heard ; though the needless abomination of crying news- 
papers is not tolerated, even in Paris. Paviors, masons, roof- 
ers, painters, all kinds of mechanics, are engaged in their 
usual avocations. Places of business are universally open till 
mid-day, as on other days. The whirl of cabs and omnibuses is 
even more constant than during the six days of the week. I 
had the curiosity to count the vehicles passing the Industrial 
Palace, Champs Elysees, mostly going to or returning from the 
Bois de Boulogne, in the afternoon of the second Sabbath in 
August, — the grand fete day at Cherbourg, when Paris was 
emptied of the elite of its fashionable society, — and found the 
average to be one hundred and forty a minute, or one thousand 
six hundred and eighty an hour. The grand water-works at 
^t. Cloud and Versailles play only on Sunday. As the day 
advances, the gardens of the Tuileries and the Champs Elysees 
present a scene of unrivalled gayety and folly. Bands of music 
execute lively military and operatic airs. Gaudy booths are 
surrounded with crowds of men, women, and children, absorbed 
by childish sports. Automata, too silly for the amusement of 
infants, serve to delight other groups of soldiers and stragglers. 
Goat-carriages, and whirligigs of wooden horses or mimic ships, 
divert the children and nurses. As evening sets in, the out- 
door concert and drinking-saloons flaunt their attractions ; 



1 6 THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 

brilliant mirrors reflect the fanciful 'gas-jets ; singing men and 
singing women, accompanied by orchestras below, amuse the 
.multitude with comic, and sometimes immoral songs. Every 
conceivable device for drawing away the people from home and 
from God is employed. The Cirque de ITmperatrice furnishes 
its equestrian attractions and its mirth-inspiring exhibitions. 
Adjacent public gardens are thronged i/vith dancers. Operatic 
and theatrical amusements add their seductive performances. 
The whole line of the Boulevards is filled with people, seated in 
front of the cafes^ sipping their brandied coffee, playing domi- 
noes, or gazing at the promenaders along the broad pavements. 
Houses and homes (if there be such a thing, without the name, 
in France) seem to be emptied into the streets and places of 
amusement ; and the city is converted into a pandemonium of 
folly, and of genteel or gross dissipation. 

" Since the accession of the reigning dynasty, Sunday labor has 
been suspended on the public works in France. But I observed 
that the stupendous preparations for the emperor's /e/^ day fire- 
works in the Place de la Concorde were in full progress on the 
second Sabbath in August, the fete occurring on the succeeding 
Sunday ; but on Monday the Sunday workmen were not there, 
because either dissipation or over-exertion compelled a day of 
rest. Such, without more of detail, is a Paris Sunday." 

This seems to the frivolous a feast of delights j but it is a 
Damocles feast, with the sword suspended by a hair above it. 
This is the city which has no word for "home \ " which knows the 
terrors of the commune ; which, during 1874, had the bodies of 
one thousand suicides lying in her morgue. 

Chambers' " Journal " says, " The Paris workman has no grand- 
children. Were it not for the constant influx from the provinces, 
the Parisian artisan would soon be extinct." A letter from 
Paris, 1870, says, "The consequence of this feverish activity is 
this : there is not an old stone-mason, or an old carpenter, or an 
old shoemaker, or an old printer, or any other old artisan, in 
Paris." 

Yet, in face of all these evils, the individual, left to him- 
self, can hardly withstand the temptation of an open Sabbath j 



THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 17 

and only the State can secure, by her arm that reaches all, that 
suspension of labor which insures to her citizens the blessings 
of the Sabbath. " If," says "The London Times," "the sacred 
character of the day be once obscured, there would not remain 
behind any influence strong enough to keep a thrifty tradesman 
from his counter for twelve hours together. A man who would 
observe the day as a Sabbath would retrench it as a holiday ; 
and thus competition and imitation would at length bring all to 
the common level of universal profaneness and continuous toil." 
The State, then, receives from the Sabbath ten years of addi- 
tional W07^k in the lives of her industrious a?td laboring classes^ 
while the whole life is more healthful, restful, cheerful, and con- 
tented. She receives less sickness to burden friends and fill 
asylums, and sickness which is sooner healed. These blessings, 
scattered in every town and village in the land among her citi- 
zens, should lead the State to pronounce the Sabbath a great 
benefactor to her. 

II, EQUALLY EVIDENT IS THE AMPLE BENEFACTION WHICH THE 

STATE IN THE GENERAL WELFARE OF HER CITIZENS RECEIVES 
IN INTELLECTUAL HEALTH, CHEERFULNESS, AND POWER. 

" K Steamer on the Thames having been blown up, the fore- 
man and stokers laid the blame on Sabbath work, which stupe- 
fied and imbittered them, made them blunder, and heedless 
what havoc they might occasion." 

" A mechanic in Massachusetts, whose business required 
special skill and care, was accustomed at times, when pressed 
with business, to pursue it on the Sabbath, after having followed 
it during six days of the week ; but he so often made mistakes, 
by which he lost more than he gained, that he abandoned the 
practice as one which he could not afford to continue. Mind 
is no more made to work vigorously and continuously in one 
course of effort seven days in a week than the body, and it 
cannot do it to advantage." 

Jorgenson, in his "Travels through France," says, "The 
moroseness occasioned by the want of a Sabbath in France has 
an effect upon the cleanliness of the young men engaged in 



1 8 TFIE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE, 

manual labor. They pursue their daily drudgery in their dirty 
working-dresses ; and habit renders them, at length, averse to a 
change of linen and clothes." 

A prize essay on the Sabbath has the title, " Heaven's Anti- 
dote to the Curse of Labor." 

Three excellent little books, published by the American Sun- 
day School Union, are commended for the reading of youth, — 
"The Last Day of the Week," "The First Day of the Week," 
" The Week Completed." 

Some old lines, once familiar, now so almost forgotten that 
we could not find any one who could repeat them entire, deserve 
to be brought to the front in the thought of both young and 
old: — 

" A Sabbath well spent 
Brings a week of content, 

And strength for the toils of the morrow ; 
But a Sabbath profaned, 
, Whatsoever be gained, 

Is a certain forerunner of sorrow." 

Golden Maxim of Sir Matthew Hale, 

" I feel," says Coleridge, " as if God had, by the Sabbath, 
given fifty-two springs in the year." 

" I am prepared to affirm," writes Isaac Taylor, " that to the 
studious especially, and whether younger or older, a Sabbath 
well spent, — spent in happy exercises of the heart, devotional 
and domestic, — a Sunday given to the soul, is the best of all 
means of refreshment to the mere intellect." 

" Dr. Carpenter, and he is himself a host, writing to a friend 
in 1852, said, 'My own experience is very strong as to the 
importance of the complete rest and change of thought once in 
the week.' The evidence of J. R. Farre, M.D., has obtained 
considerable currency and fame. ' All men of whatever class,' 
he says, ' who must necessarily be employed six days in the 
week, should abstain on the seventh, and in the course • of life 
would assuredly gain by giving to their bodies the repose, and 
to their mind the change of ideas, suited to the day, for which 
it was appointed by unerring wisdom. I have frequently ob- 



THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 19 

served the premature death of medical men from continued 
exertion. I have advised the clergyman, in lieu of his Sabbath, 
to rest one day in the week : it forms a continual prescription 
of mine. I have seen many destroyed by their duties on that 
day ; and, to preserve others, I have frequently suspended them, 
for a season, from the discharge of those duties. The working 
of the mind in one continued train of thought is destructive of 
life in the most distinguished class of society; and senators 
tliemselves stand in need of reform in that particular. I have 
observed many of them destroyed by neglecting this economy 
of life.' " 

Henry Ward Beecher says in his " Yale Lectures on Preach- 
ing," " Saturday should be a play-day. I make it a day, not of 
laziness, but of general, social, pleasurable exhilaration. I go 
up street and see pleasant people. I go and look at pictures. 
I love to see horses. I like to go to Tiffany's. After I get 
home, I enjoy myself quietly in the evening; and, when Sunday 
comes, I am impleted."^ " Saturday and Monday ought to be 
inclined planes, — the former a very inclined plane up to Sun- 
day, and the latter a very inclined plane away from it." 

Rev. Charles F. Deems explains how he keeps himself able 
to work hard without any results of weariness or ill health. He 
says, " I keep a Sabbath : few ministers do so. Many years I 
did not. On Friday night I go to bed, and say, 'Now I lay me 
down to sleep ; ' and no one must wake me until Sunday morning, 
even if ' The Sunday Magazine ' should suspend, or the Church 
of the Strangers should burn down. I never yet have slept that 
long, as I generally rise on Saturday afternoon to boil for an 
hour in the Russian bath. Generally on Saturday night I can- 
not recollect Vv'hat the texts for Sunday are, having put the 
preparation all safely away. Such a regimen enables me to 
begin fresh on Sunday, and work till Friday night like a house 
afire and the wind blowing." 

Sir David Wilkie, the celebrated painter, remarked, that 
" those artists who wrought on Sunday were soon disqualified 
from working at all." 

.1 Yale Lectures, p. 200. 



2 THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 

Dr. Johnson, on his death-bed, made three requests of Sir 
Joshua Reynolds : the first was, '■ that he would never paint on 
a Sunday." "The editor of 'The Standard,' some years ago, 
recorded this result of many years' observation in these words : 
' We never knew a man work seven days a week who did not 
kill himself, or kill his mind.' ' I have found it necessary to my 
own well-being,' says Dr. Farre, ' to abridge my labors on the 
Sabbath to what is actually necessary.' " 

Says Beecher, " Through the week we go down into the val- 
leys of care and shadows : our Sabbaths should be hills of light 
and joy in God's presence." 

" A distinsiuished financier, charo-ed with an immense amount 
of property during the great pecuniary pressure of 1836 and 
1837, said, ' I should have been a dead man had it not been for 
the Sabbath. Obliged to work from morning till night through 
the whole week, I felt on Saturday, especially Saturday after- 
noon, as if I mustYidMQ. rest. It was like going into a dense fog. 
Everything looked dark and gloomy, as if nothing could be 
saved. I dismissed all, and kept the Sabbath in the good old 
way. On Monday it was all bright and sunshine. I could see 
through, and I got through. But, had it not been for the Sab- 
bath, I have no doubt I should have been in the grave.' " 

These testimonies are numerous and interesting. "Rev. Dr. 
Wilson of Philadelphia, once a lawyer, was accustomed, when 
pressed with business, to make out his briefs, and prepare for 
his Monday pleading, on the Sabbath. ^ But he so uniformly 
failed in carrying out his Sunday plans, that it arrested his 
attention. As a philosopher, he inquired into the cause of his 
uniform failure, and came to the conclusion that it might be, 
and probably was, on account of his violation of the Sabbath 
by employing it in secular business. He therefore, from that 
time, abandoned the practice of doing any thing for his clients 
on that day. The difficulty ceased : his efforts on Monday 
were as successful as on other days." 

" A lawyer of distinguished talents, on his death-bed, said to 
his friend, ' Charge every young Imvyer not to do any thing in the 
business of his profession on the Sabbath. It will iJijure hitn^ 



THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 21 

and ksse7t the prospect of his success. I have tried it. I do not 
know why it is ; but tliere is something about it very striking. 
My Sabbath efforts have almost always failed. I found unex- 
pectedly that my clients had deceived me, and that the evidence 
was very different from what I expected ; some of my witnesses 
would be absent ; my own efforts would fail ; the judge would 
go against me, or the jury could not agree. Tell all the young 
lawyers., that, if they would succeed, they ?nust not take the Sabbath 
for business. It is the may to fail. ^ " 

Sir Matthew Hale writes, " Though my hands and my mind 
have been as full of secular business, both before and after I 
was judge, as, it may be, any man's in England, yet I never 
wanted time in six days to ripen and fit myself for the business 
and employments I had to do, though I borrowed not one min- 
ute from the Lord's Day to prepare for it by study or otherwise. 
But, on the other hand, if I had at any time borrowed from the 
day any time for my secular employment, I found it did fur- 
ther me less than if I had let it alone ; and therefore, when 
some years' experience, upon a most attentive and vigilant ob- 
servation, had given me this instruction, I grew peremptorily 
resolved never in this kind to make a breach upon the Lord's 
Day, which I have now strictly observed for more than thirty 
years." " He also declared that it had become almost prover- 
bial with him, when any one importuned him to attend to secu- 
lar business on the Sabbath, to tell them, if they expected it to 
' succeed amiss,' they might desire him to undertake it on that 
day j that he feared even to think of secular business on the 
Sabbath, because the resolution then taken would be disap- 
pointed or unsux:cessful ; and that, the more faithfully he ap- 
plied himself to the duties of the Lord's Day, the more happy 
and successful was his business during the week." 

" A distinguished merchant, who for twenty years did a vast 
amount of business, said, ' Had it not been for the Sabbath, I 
have no doubt I should have been a maniac long ago.' This 
was mentioned in a company of merchants; when one remarked, 

' That is exactly the case with Mr. . He used to say tha^ 

the Sabbath was the best day in the week to pla» successful 



2 2 THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE, 

voyages, showing that his mind had no Sabbath. He has been 
in the insane-asylum for years, and will probably die there.' " 

Romilly, though urged, would not give up his Sunday con- 
sultations. He lost his reason, and terminated his own life. 
Castlereagh, also, walked the same path to the grave, — Sabbath- 
work^ loss of reason, self-destruction. 

Wilberforce wrote to a friend, " I am strongly impressed by 
the recollection of your endeavor to prevail upon the lawyers 
to give up Sunday consultations, in which poor Romilly would 
not concur." This was Sir Samuel Romilly, solicitor-general of 
England under Fox's administration, who terminated his life 
Nov. 2, 1818. On Castlereagh's suicide, Wilberforce, reminded 
of Romilly, wrote, " If he had suffered his mind to enjoy such 
occasional remission, it is highly probable that the strings of life 
would never have snapped from over-tension. Alas, alas, poor 
fellow!" 

" Wilberforce ascribes his own continuance for so long a time, 
under such a pressure of cares and labors, in no small degree to 
his conscientious and habitual observance of the Sabbath. 'Oh, 
what a blessed day,' said he, ' is the Sabbath, which allows us a 
precious interval wherein to pause, to come out from the thickets 
of worldly concerns, and give ourselves up to heavenly and 
spiritual things ! ' " 

How much bad legislation has been due to men whose minds 
were jaded and perturbed by Sabbath work, it would be difficult 
to estimate. It is a curious speculation, whether, had our states- 
77ie?i been devout Sabbath-observers, the Rebellion had not been 
prevented. 

Observing these things, the increase of vigor in all minds by 
the Sabbath, the preservation of valuable minds of great power 
and activity under great labors, and how the freshness of each 
mind affects the whole, and considering how much of good legis- 
lation must be due to rested minds, is not the claim just, that 
the Sabbath is the benefactor to the State 'i 

In some way connecting itself v/ith the Centennial display 
of inventions and products of labor, it comes in place to observe, 
that, — 



THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 23 

III. THE STATE IS GREATLY INDEBTED TO THE SABBATH FOR 

ITS PROSPERITY IN LABOR AND BUSINESS. 

If it preserves fresh and vigorous mind and body, as all the 
facts show, this must be the case. The stokers on the Thames 
said that the steamboat blew up because they were worn out and 
disturbed in mind by Sabbath work, which made them reckless. 
This shows how abuse of the Sabbath destroys property. Lord 
Macaulay says, " If the Sunday had not been observed as a day 
of rest, but the axe, the spade, the anvil, and the loom had been 
at work every day during the past three centuries, I have not 
the smallest doubt that we should have been at this moment 
a poorer people, and a less civilized people, than we are. Of 
course, I do not mean that a man v/ill not produce more in a 
week by working seven days than by working six days : but I 
Very much doubt, whether, at the end of a year, he will generally 
have produced more by working seven days a week than by 
working six days a week; and I firmly believe, that, at the end 
of twenty years, he will have produced less by working seven 
days a week than by working six days a week." 

As to his remuneration for labor, John Stuart Mill makes the 
striking statement, "Operatives are perfectly right in 

THINKING, THAT, IF ALL WORKED ON SUNDAY, SEVEN DAYS' WORK 
WOULD HAVE TO BE GIVEN FOR SIX DAYS' WAGES." Why do nOt 

the intelligent poor open their eyes to this, that however Sunday 
work and Sunday amusements may, at first., seem to advantage 
and recreate them, the eventual effect must be, in the nature of 
things, and is by actual fact, to subject them and their time 
more absolutely to the rich ? The process as to work is this : 
first, your Sunday labor is extra, and you exult ; then expected, 
then exacted, and you are discharged if it is not rendered. The 
process as to amusements is, first, the poor have a nearly equal 
share : but the pleasures of the rich encroach upon the time of 
the poor; and the stabler, for instance, who might in independ- 
ence have had his Sabbath at home, must give his day to furnish 
horses to please the rich. Every one should remember that 
every extra hour he gives of labor to the rich for a " considera- 



24 THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 

tion " will subject the workman of another generation to an 
hour's labor for Jioiight. For example, should actors accommo- 
datingly give two hours for a Sunday rehearsal, the actors of 
ten years hence will have to attend Sunday-night rehearsal, or 
receive discharge. Mill's remark should be impressed on all 
working-men, " Seven days' work would have to be given 
FOR SIX days' wages." Rcsist demand on you for a single 
minute of Sunday work. What you do now accommodatingly 
you will do hereafter by compulsion. 'Tis a yoke, even if velvet- 
lined. 

Sabbath work must impoverish the State both in the quantity 
and quality of the labor. Mr. Bagnall, an extensive iron-mas- 
ter, discontinued the working of the blast-furnaces on the 
Lord's Day ; and in 1841, about two 3^ears after the change had 
been adopted, stated to a committee of the House of Lords, 
" We have made rather more iron since we stopped on Sundays 
than before." After a seven-years' trial of the plan, Mr. 
Bagnall wrote thus: "We have made a larger quantity of iron 
than ever, and gone on, in all our six iron-works, much more 
free from accidents and interruptions than during any preced- 
ing seven years of our lives." " Such facts as these prepare us 
for the statement that the amount of productive labor in France 
was diminished by the change from a seventh to a tenth day's 
rest." It is well known, that in September, 1792, the "fierce 
democracy " of France thought to " change times and seasons," 
abolished the Christian year, gave new names to the months, 
worshipped a noted figurante from the opera as the Goddess of 
Reason in Notre Dame, and, putting away the Christian week 
and Sabbath, invented a week of ten days, — the decadi. But the 
revolutionists found it true, that " men who work against God's 
commandments work against the providence of God, and the 
providence of God will be too strong for them." 

That was a noble and morally helpful wife, who, when her 
husband informed her that he had been requested to go with 
the cars on the Sabbath, quietly replied, "I take it for granted 
that you do not intend to go." He urged the necessity of gain- 
ing a livelihood. Her reply was, — a sentence which ought to 



THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 25 

be written in letters of gold, — '''If ct man cannot support a family 
by keeping the Sabbath^ he certainly cannot support them by break- 
ing it.''"' — "I am very glad," said the man, " that you think so : 
I think so myself. That was what I wanted, — to see whether 
we think alike." He did not lose his place. 

A distinguished merchant once observed, " There is no need 
of breaking the Sabbath, and no benefit from it. We have not 
had a vessel leave the harbor on the Sabbath for more than 
twenty years. It is about thirty years since I came to this city ; 
and every man through this whole range, who came down to 
his store or suffered his counting-room to be opened on the 
Sabbath, has lost his property." 

Sabbath hicsbandry does not prosper. 

The people of Israel found no lack, but blessing on basket 
and store, while they observed the command, "/;z earing time" 
\aro, to plough] ^'' a7id in harvest thou shall resty Many a 
Gentile farmer has found it for his interest not to disregard 
that saying. 

There would seem to be a Divine Providence, which some- 
times sets its mark of disapprobation on the wanton disregard 
of this time. 

" A man in the State of New York remarked that he intend- 
ed to cheat the Lord out of the next Sabbath by going to a 
neighboring town to visit his friends. He could not afford to 
take one of his own days, and therefore resolved to cheat the 
Lord out of his. On Saturday he went with his team into a 
forest to get some wood. By the fall of a tree he was placed 
in such a situation, that he did not attempt to carry his intended 
fraud into execution : he was willing to stay at home. 

" But another man in the same State, who had spent the Sab- 
bath in getting in his grain, said that he had fairly cheated the 
Almighty out of one day. He boasted of it as a mark of his 
superiority. On Tuesday the lightning struck his barn. He 
gained nothing by working on the Sabbath." 

'"Those views,' said a man, 'are all superstition. The idea 
that it is not profitable or safe to work on the Sabbath as on 
other days is false. I will prove that it is false.' So he at- 



26 THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 

tempted it. He ploughed his field, and sowed his grain, on the 
Sabbath. It came up, and grew finely. Often, during the sea- 
son, he pointed to it in proof that Sabbath-day labor is safe and 
profitable. He reaped it, and stacked it up in the field. His boys 
took the gun, and went out into the woods. It was a dry time, 
and they set the leaves on fire. The wind took the fire : it swept 
over the field, and nought but the blackness of ashes marked 
the place where the grain stood. He could not prove, though 
he tried long and hard, that it is safe or profitable to work on 
the Sabbath." 

" Though this is not a state of full retribution, yet Jehovah is 
'a God who judgeth in the earth; ' and sometimes, even here, he 
visits certain sins with his curse." 

" It is said that those who manufacture salt by boiling must 
violate the Sabbath, because it will not do to let the kettles cool 
down as often as once a week. But a gentleman tried the ex- 
periment, who said, that, if he could not keep the Sabbath, he 
would not make salt. He had thirty-two kettles. He allowed 
the fires to go out, and all the works to stop, from Saturday till 
Monday. His men attended worship on the Sabbath. In the 
season they boiled seventy-eight days, and made an average of 
two hundred bushels of salt a day, at a breakage expense of six 
cents. His neighbors could hardly believe it. Not a man with 
his dimensions of kettles had made as much salt as he, and 
their expenses for breakage and repairs had been much greater." 

" A gentleman belonging to a fishing town which sends out 
more than two hundred vessels in a year writes, ' Those vessels 
which have not fished on the Sabbath have, taken together, met 
with more than ordinary success. The vessel whose earnings 
were the highest the last year and the year before was one on 
board which the Sabbath was religiously kept. There is one 
firm which has had eight vessels in its employ this season. Seven 
have fished on the Sabbath, and one has not. That one has 
earned seven hundred dollars more than the most successful of 
the seven. There are two other firms employing each three ves- 
sels. Two out of the three in each case have kept the Sabbath, 
and in each case have earned more than two-thirds of the profits,^ " 



THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 27 

These incidents and many like them, which Edwards has set 
forth in his excellent " Sabbath Manual," in regard to the keeping 
of this day in travelling, manufacturing, haying, harvesting, and 
other avocations, are so wonderful, that even an irreligious mind 
cannot fail to be impresed by them, and feel inclined to believe 
that a Divine Providence watches over this day, to stamp its 
infraction with his displeasure, and its keeping with his great 
reward. 

Take the testimony of whale-fishers, which is certainly marvel- 
lous. It would seem, on the one hand, as if sometimes, to test 
man's faith in a Divine Providence in the most trying way, God 
sent his leviathans that day alone, week after week, to disport 
themselves before the wistful eyes of men, which from mast-top 
had searched the whole expanse of ocean for .months in vain ; 
while, on the other hand, it would seem as if, when the trial of 
faith was over, God himself became the rewarder, and led his 
sea-monsters, as by a hook in the nose, to lay their lives at the 
feet of man, then most lord of creation when most obedient to 
his Maker. 

" Capt. Scoresby of the British navy, afterwards commander 
of a whale-ship in the northern seas, says in his journal, that 
he does not recollect a case in which they saw whales on the 
Sabbath, and did not attempt to take them, where they were not 
remarkably successful during the subsequent week." Capt. Green 
of England, and a Massachusetts captain of a whale-ship, record 
a similar experience. " Capt. John Stetson, our consular agent 
at the Sandwich Islands, gives a singularly striking account of 
a converted captain, who called his ship's company together, 
and informed them of his views. They agreed to give up whal- 
ing on the Sabbath. The next Sabbath, a man on deck cried 
out, ' There she blows ! ' They did not lower the boats, though 
the whale passed near the ship. The week passed away without 
seeing another whale. The Sabbath came, and a whale was 
again seen. Another week passed away, and no whales. The 
third Sabbath came, and again they saw whales. The crew be- 
came almost mutinous ; but the captain assured them they were 
in the path of duty, and went on with his religious services 



28 THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 

This was the last trial. They soon obtained all the oil they 
wanted, and returned in much less time than many who took 
whales on the Sabbath." 

William E. Dodge of New York, more than twenty-five years 
connected with travelling corporations, says, '"''The desecration of 
the Sabbath by railroads is an absolute loss to those comp allies.''^ 
"You go on a Monday morning, and see a poor, haggard-looking 
engineer, all dirty, kept up all day Sunday, and all night, and 
worn out, perhaps. He steps upon the engine : if you are a rail- 
road man, you feel intense anxiety all the time/' And then he 
takes up the extremest case. " Within the last fortnight the en- 
gineer came to us and said, ' I know your principles ; but we are 
placed under circumstances in which it becomes absolutely neces- 
sary for us to work on the Sabbath,' — ' What is the matter ? ' — 
' We have a bridge that is unsafe. We have forty or fifty trains 
running over it a day ; and we see no other way in the world to 
repair it but to start all our force Saturday night, and get it done 
Monday morning.' — ' Is there any thing that cannot be done 
on any other day?' — 'We shall have to stop the trains.' — 
' Then it is only a matter of dollars and cents. Just give notice 
to the connecting railroads that there will be no trains, and take 
time and do the work.' Said the engineer, ' I guess you are 
right. I often think that I have worked my men all day Sunday 
to get a job on the road done, and on Monday and Tuesday 
they were not worth a cent. I made up my mind I never got 
ahead one inch by working Sunday.' " 

It is a serious question, how far the great tornado of strikes 
which has just spe7it its fury was due, directly or indirectly^ to 
disregard of what our Anglo-Saxon forefathers called Rest Day^ 
its repose and instructions^ by railroad and 7nining corporations, 
a7id by miners and railroad employees theiiiselves. 

The question put to railroad corporations received reply from 
eighteen, that they found Sunday trains profitable ; from thirty- 
eight, unprofitable. The St. Paul corporation answered, " What 
shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his 
own soul ? " Some of the replies of these superintendents 
would be worth quoting, had we space. 



THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 29 

The North-western Railroad Company in England, in 1849, 
issued the following circular : " It is commended to the atten- 
tion of the stockholders and directors of railroads in this 
country, as the judgment of railway authorities of experience 
and position, that the business shall be suspended on Sundays, 
except for such restricted conveyance of passengers as seems 
called for on the ground of public necessity; and the directors, 
to whom is hereby confided the duty of devising the extent of 
such restrictions, shall take as their guide in discharging their 
duty the consideration of the public good, and not the private 
interests of the company." 

Some of the railroad coinpanies take a noble stand in this matter. 
But there yet remains much noble work to be done by these 
corporations. Few of them are aware how annoying Sunday 
travel and freighting is to thousands of people who tolerate it. 
" The railroad interest has become one of the most important in 
the financial and commercial world." "The moral influence of 
the railroad system is a matter of immense moment." " It is 
believed that the tendency of the railroads of the country, under 
proper regulations, would be greatly to diminish the amount of 
intemperance, Sabbath-breaking, and kindred vices." Thou- 
sands read with pleasure such items as this, from the " Journal 
of Commerce : " — 

"Del., Lack., and W. R.R. Co., 
New York, May 31, 1876. 

"The gauge of this company's railroad was altered on Saturday, not Sun- 
day last, as stated in error in your 'Journal.' Please make the correction, 
as we believe in the observance — by rest from labor at least — of the 
Christian as well as the 'American Sabbath,' and that railroad manage- 
ment should be exemplary in the proper obligations to the community. 

" Yours truly, 

" Samuel Sloan, President.^'' 

" If there is any city in the world," says Boardman, " which 
requires a general delivery of letters on Sunday, it must be the 
financial centre of the world, London. It is preposterous to 
claim, in behalf of any community, an extent of post-office 
accommodations beyond that which satisfies the two millions of 
that great capital." 



30 THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 

Twenty-five years ago, London presented a memorial to the 
government against Sabbath mails. The subscription' is headed 
by the great name of the Barings. 

DECLARATION. 

" London, January, 1850. 

" We the undersigned, being strongly impressed with a belief that there 
exists no greater necessity to justify the transaction of the ordinary business 
of receiving and delivering letters on the Sabbath Day in any of the post- 
offices of the United Kingdom than in those of the metropolis, do hereby 
earnestly request her Majesty's government to take into immediate con- 
sideration the expediency and propriety of causing the same to be discon- 
tinued, by ordering the post-offices in the country to be altogether closed on 
that day. This belief is grounded on the following facts : — 

" I. That the metropolis, containing a population of two million two hun- 
dred thousand, has never experienced any necessity for the opening of the 
metropolitan post-offices on Sundays. 

"2. That the great acceleration which has recently taken place in the 
postal communications throughout the empire must necessarily diminish, to 
a very great extent, any inconvenience which it might otherwise be supposed 
would arise from closing the provincial post-offices on Sunday. 

"And believing that the effectual preservation of a seventh day of rest 
from their ordinary labor is a principle of vital importance to the physical 
and social well-being of the poorer classes of society, whilst the due observ- 
ance of the Lord's Day is a duty of solemn obligation upon all classes of 
the community, we agree to take such measures as may appear best calculat- 
ed to press the foregoing considerations on the attention of the government 
and the legislature. 

Baring Brothers. Barclay, Bevan, Tritton, & Co. 

Williams, Deacon, & Co. Jones, Lloyd, & Co. 

Hankeys & Co. Masterman, Peters, & Co." 

And twenty-nine other banking firms of the metropolis of the world. 

Similar declarations were signed by the leading mercantile 
firms, the principal surgeons and solicitors, and the aldermen 
of London. 

Even in war, Sunday battles have been observed to be 
generally disastrous to the beginner of them. Big Bethel, Bull 
Run, Ball's Bluff, were our Sunday battles before McClellan's 
noble Sabbath order ; Mill Springs, which lost the Rebels Ken- 
tucky ; Winchester, which lost them the Virginia Valley ; and 
Pittsburg, which cost them the Mississippi Valley. " Almost 



THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 31 

without exception, the assailing party in Sunday warfare, 
whether Union or Confederate, was defeated." 

" Nor are tliese isolated historical facts. History is full of 
them. The British forces assailed us on Lake Champlain and 
at New Orleans on Sunday, and were defeated. We assailed 
them at Quebec : our army was repulsed, and its leader slain. 
Napoleon began the battle of Waterloo on Sunday, and lost 
his army and his empire." 

Exceptions of course there are, since instant and obvious 
and entire retribution is not the invariable rule on earth, — it is 
said that our pious ancestors commenced the great Narragan- 
sett fight on the Sabbath, — but the examples are sufficiently 
numerous to be suggestive to an assailing general on the Sab- 
bath who is whipped. 

The Sabbath orders of Washington, Lincoln, McClellan, and 
Foote, make a fair page of our history. McClellan^ s noble order 
was dated Sept. 6, 1861 : "The general commanding regards 
this as no idle form : one day's rest in seven is necessary to 
men and animals : more than that, the observance of the holy 
day of the God of mercy and of battles is our sacred duty." 
Commodore Foote'' s order was dated Dec. 17, 1861 : "The voice 
of Washington thus echoed such utterances of revelation to the 
army of the Revolution, and now to the army of Restoration : 
* We can have little hope of the blessing of Heaven on our arms 
if we insult it by our impiety and folly.' " 

That of Lincoln speaks thus : — 

*• Executive Mansion, Washington, 
Nov. 15, 1S62. 

*' The President, commander-in-chief of the army and navy, desires and 
enjoins the orderly observance of the Sabbath by the officers and men in the 
military and naval service. The importance for man and beast of the pre- 
scribed weekly rest, the sacred rights of Christian soldiers and sailors, a 
becoming deference to the best sentiment of a Christian people, and a due 
regard for the Divine Will, demand that Sunday labor in the army and navy 
be reduced to the measure of strict necessity. The discipline and character 
of the national forces should not suffer, nor the cause they defend be imper- 
illed, by the profanation of the day or name of the Most High. 

"*At the time of public distress,' adopting the words of Washington in 
1776, 'men may find enough to do in the service of God and their country, 



32 THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 

without abandoning themselves to vice arid immorality.' The first general 
order issued by the Father of his Country indicates the spirit in wliich our 
institutions were founded, and should ever be defended : ' The general 
hopes and trusts that every officer and man will endeavor to live and act as 
becomes a Christian soldier defending the dearest rights and liberties of his 
country.' — Abraham Lincoln." 

These last examples — railroads, post-offices, and warfare — 
are extreme examples. Come back to the routine of life. 
" There is not," says a working-man, " a neighborhood, village, 
or township, that is notable for its profanation of the sacred day 
of rest, but is proverbial for its poverty and its crime." J. S. 
Thomas, superintendent of police in England, says, " I know 
from experience that persons who are in the habit of attending 
a place of worship are more careful in their pecuniary transac- 
tions, they are more careful in their language, they are more 
economical in their arrangements at home, they are more affec- 
tionate and humane, and in every respect superior beings by far, 
than persons of contrary habits. Those who neglect a place of 
worship generally become idle, neglectful of their person, filthy 
in their habits, careless as to their children, and equally careless 
in their pecuniary transactions." Were there no other consider- 
ations in the same direction, these would be sufficient to stamp 
the Centennial Commissioners in their action as wise men, con- 
siderate of the present and permanent good of their country, as 
well as reverent men, regardful of the command of the Almighty. 

IV. FOR MUCH OF HER MORAL VIRTUE, AND TONE OF CHAR- 
ACTER, THE STATE IS INDEBTED TO THE SABBATH. 

Blackstone says, " A corruption of morals usually follows a 
profanation of the Sabbath." Montalembert writes, "There is 
no religion without worship, and no worship without the Sab- 
bath." John Foster speaks thus, that this day is " a remarka- 
ble appointment for raising the general tenor of moral exist- 
ence." "It prevents strong temptation to intemperance," says 
Gilfillan, " by giving rest, instead of unnatural stimulant to 
further activity." Baron Gurney, when passing sentence of 
death on two boatmen at the Stafford assizes, said, "There is 



THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 33 

no body of men so destitute of all moral culture as boatmen : 
they know no Sabbath, and are possessed of no means of reli- 
gious instruction." Mr. Edge of Manchester observes respect- 
ing the London bakers, that " the low mental and moral condi- 
tion of the trade generally in London, at the present time, is 
notorious." Mr. Henry Ellis, a master-baker, says of them, 
" Those good and moral impressions which they first receive in 
their early days are entirely lost from the continual practice of 
working on the Sabbath." The chaplain of the Model Prison, 
London, says, " We are called to minister to few but Sabbath- 
breakers." The chaplain of Clerkenwell affirms, " I do not 
recollect a single case of capital offence where the party has not 
been a Sabbath-breaker. Indeed, I may say, in reference to 
prisoners of all classes, that, in nineteen cases out of twenty, 
they are persons who have not only neglected the Sabbath, but 
all religious ordinances." 

A distinguished merchant, long accustomed to observe men, 
and who had gained an uncommon knowledge of them, said, 
" When I see one of my apprentices or clerks riding out on the 
Sabbath, on Monday I dismiss him. Such a one cannot be 
trusted." 

One does well to be a little shy, in matters which concern 
himself, of any man who he knows deliberately breaks any 
command laid upon his conscience ; since, if temptation were 
to come to him in a form which involved disregarding his 
fellows' rights, the same habit of sacrificing duty to interest 
would be likely to prevail. A ship-captain discharged a crew 
who would not work for him on the Sabbath. Meeting an old 
sailor, he sought to hire him. The answer was, " No." — " Why 
not 1 " — " Because," answered the sailor, " the man who will rob 
the Almighty of his day, I should be afraid would, if he could, 
rob me of my wages." 

" A father, whose son was addicted to riding out for pleasure 
on the Sabbath, was told, that, if he did not stop it, his son would 
be ruined. He did not stop it, but sometimes set the example 
of riding out for pleasure himself. His son became a man ; was 
placed in a responsible situation, and intrusted with a large 



34 THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 

amount of property. Soon he was a defaulter, and absconded. 
In a different part of the country he obtained another responsi- 
ble situation, and was again intrusted with a large amount of 
property. Of that he defrauded the owner, and fled again. 
He was apprehended, tried, convicted, and sent to the state- 
prison. After years spent in solitude and labor, he v;rote a 
letter to his father; and, after recounting his course of crime, he 
added, ''That was the effect of breaking the Sabbath wheft I was 
a boy.^ " 

" I once defended a man," says Daniel Webster, " charged 
with the awful crime of murder. At the conclusion of the trial, 
I asked him what could have induced him to stain his hands 
with the blood of a fellow-being. Turning his bloodshot eyes 
full upon me, he said, ' Mr. Webster, in my youth I spent the 
holy Sabbath in evil amusements, instead of frequenting the 
house of prayer and praise.' " Webster's words in regard to 
the Sabbath school are weighty : "The Sabbath school is one 
of the great institutions of the day. It leads our youth to the 
path of truth and morality, and makes them good men and 
useful citizens. As a school of religious instruction, it is of 
inestimable value ; as a civil institution, it is priceless. It has 
done more to preserve our liberties than grave statesmen and 
armed soldiers. Let it, then, be fostered and protected until 
the end of time." ^ 

Gilfillan calls our attention to the fact that '■^ the family jlour- 
i s he s where the Sabbath is really observed^ and nowhere more than 
in Great Britain and America." The connection it would not 
be difficult to trace. To the family, the Sabbath, in a less 
pronounced form, is a kind of Thanksgiving Day and family 
festival. The " Cotter's Saturday Night " has in prospect the 
cheer of the family gathering of the next day, around 

" The ingle blinking bonnily," 

and the walk to the " kirk " together, each seeing the others in 
their neatest garb and most cheerful mood. Gilfillan quotes 
Madame de Stael : " Nowhere can be seen such faithful protec- 

1 Letter to Prof. Pease, June 15, 1852; quoted by Hon. S. Benson: sent to Christian 
Union by J. S. C. Abbott. 



THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 35 

tioD on the one side, and such tender and pious devotedness on 
the other, as in married life in England. Nowhere do the wives 
share with so much courage and simplicity the troubles and 
dangers of the husbands wherever the duties of their profes- 
sion may call them." Baron d'Haussez observes, "All things 
considered, cceteris paribus, thanks to the influence of their man- 
ners, the married state in England is happier than in any other 
country." In equally laudatory terms do M. de Tocqueville and 
M. Michel Chevalier write of the marriage-$ie and conjugal 
happiness as they exist in America. Of Scotland Dr. Currie 
remarks, " A striking particular of the character of the Scotch 
peasantry is the one which it is hoped will not be lost, — 
the strength of their domestic affections." 

Henry Ward Beecher says, " The one great poem of New 
England is her Sunday. Through that she has escaped mate- 
rialism. That has been her crystal dome overhead, through 
which imagination has been kept alive. New England's imagi- 
nation is to be found, not in art or literature, but in her inven- 
tions, her social organism, and, above all, in her religious life. 
The Sabbath has been the nurse of that. When she ceases to 
have a Sunday, she will be as this landscape is now, — grow- 
ing dark, all its lines blurred, its distances and gradations fast 
merging into sheeted darkness and night." 

Webster says, " The longer I live, the more highly do I esti- 
mate the Christian Sabbath, and the more grateful do I feel 
toward those who impress its importance on the community." 
Robespierre, who said good things and did bloody things, in a 
report for the Committee of Public Safety affirms that it is 
desirable that there should be in the citizen " a rapid instinct 
for moral things." Proudhon remarks, that " this ' rapid 
instinct,' this second conscience, the Sabbath created in the 
Israelite, and the Sunday, in a greater degree, in a Christian." 
" How many heroic devotions," he exclaims, " how many sacri- 
fices, were consummated in the heart in the inexpressible mono- 
logues of the holy days ! What high thoughts, magnificent con- 
ceptions, descended into the soul of philosopher and poet ! 
What generous resolutions were taken ! Hercules, at the close 



36 THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 

of his youth, offered a sacrifice to Minerva. Standing before 
the altar, after making the libations and singing hymns to the 
goddess, he awaited in silence the flame to consume the holo- 
caust. Suddenly two goddesses appeared, Pleasure and Virtue, 
who displayed their charms, and each demanded his homage. 
Pleasure spread out her seductions: Virtue offered labors an 1 
perils with glory incorruptible. The young hero chose Virtue." 
This vision, this choice, comes to youth in the day and place 
of worship. Statesmen are made who are incorruptible, and 
all society is toned up in virtue. On the other hand, Prideaux 
remarks, '' It is not to be doubted, that, if the public teaching of 
religion on the Sabbath were once dropped among us, the gen- 
erality of the people, whatever else might be done to obviate it, 
would, in seven years, relapse* into as bad a state of barbarity as 
was ever in practice among the worst of our Saxon or Danish 
ancestors." 

V. ONE VIEW, NOT OFTEN TAKEN, DISCLOSES THE SABBATH AS 

BENEFACTOR TO THE STATE IN BESTOWING AND SECURING LIB- 
ERTY, REPUBLICAN LIBERTY, AND THE BLESSINGS WHICH COME 
IN ITS TRAIN. 

The connection of this day's observance with republican insti- 
tutions is apparent when it is remembered that it is a day of 
concourse of citizens and neighbors ; a day of reflection and 
cheerful rest ; a day of profound speculation oftentimes ; a day 
of imploring God's favor ; a day of reading that book, which, in 
its inner principles, sets forth 

" A church without a bishop, and a state without a king." 

But we prefer to call witnesses. A wise observer (Russell S. 
Cook) has entitled his report on the Sabbath in Europe, " The 
Holy Day of Freedom, and the Holiday of Despotism." He 
says, " Nothing can be clearer to the intelligent observer of 
European life than that a holiday Sabbath is a frightful cause 
of physical, political, and moral degradation to the masses of 
the people. A day of worldly pleasure for the rich makes a 
day of toil for the dependent classes." " A holiday Sabbath is 



THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 37 

thus the ally of despotism. It is a memorable fact, that the only- 
free countries in the world are those in which popular convic- 
tion and legal enactment recognize and conserve the sacred 
character of the Sabbath. One of our most eminent writers, 
who has ' made the French and Continental mode of keeping 
Sunday a matter of calm, dispassionate inquiry and observa- 
tion,' has said, 'There is not a single nation, possessed of a 
popular form of government, which has. not our theory of the 
Sabbath. Protestant Switzerland, England, Scotland, and Amer- 
ica cover the whole ground of popular freedom ; and, in all 
these, this idea of the Sabbath prevails with a distinctness about 
equal to the degree of liberty. Nor do I think this result an 
accidental one.' How should it be accidental, when there is 
the best evidence that Continental rulers encourage Sabbath 
profanations as a means of unfitting their subjects for the asser- 
tion and exercise of their political rights ? The historian Hal- 
lam reveals a pregnant fact when he states that all European 
despots 'have for many years perceived and acted on the prin- 
ciple, that it is the policy of government to encourage a love of 
pastime and recreation in the people, both because it keeps 
them from speculating on religious and political matters, and 
because it renders them more cheerful, and less sensible of the 
evils of their condition.' But the very life of a free people 
depends, under God, on such a perpetual speculation on re- 
ligious and political matters as the Bible and the Sabbath and a 
free gospel prompt. If we would cling to our institutions, we 
must cherish the holy day of freedom and religion, and frown 
on the holiday of despots." 

This opinion does not stand uncorroborated. Another writer 
says, " It was in logical harmony with the whole genius of the 
Stuart dynasty that James I., and after him Charles L, should 
attempt to break down the Sabbath by imposing the ' Book of 
Sports ' upon the British people." " A nation that moils for six 
days, and frolics the seventh, is about as fit material for a tyrant 
as could be desired. But a tyrant could do nothing with a 
people who had free access to the Bible. Such a people would 
have too much intelligence to wear the yoke of the oppressor. 



38 THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 

They would understand their rights, and have the courage to 
assert them. Neither crown nor mitre could terrify them into a 
servile submission to wrong, nor put off their demand for their 
proper franchises with a sop of ' beggarly amusements.' " 

Thus is verified what Adam Smith said long ago in a more 
general way, " The Sabbath as a political institution is of ines- 
timable value, independently of its claims to divine authority;" 
and what the dispassionate Blackstone wrote, " The keeping 
of one day in seven holy as a time of relaxation and refresh- 
ment, as well as for public worship, is of admirable service to 
the State, considered merely as a civil institution. It humanizes, 
by the help of conversation and society, the manners of the lower 
classes, which would otherwise degenerate into a sordid ferocity 
and savage selfishness of spirit. It enables the industrious 
workman to pursue his occupation in the ensuing week with 
health and cheerfulness. It imprints on the minds of the people 
that sense of their duty to God so necessary to make them good 
citizens, but yet which would be worn out and defaced by an 
unremitted continuance of labor without any stated times of 
calling them to the worship of their Maker." 

In 1850, Montalembert, in the name of a commission, reported 
to the French Parliament on Sabbath observance. After remark- 
ing that the Almighty conferred success on human labor in pro- 
portion as nations respect the Lord's Day, he refers in proof 
to England and the United States, and says, — 

" Witness that city London, the capital and focus of most of 
the commerce of the world, where Sunday is observed with the 
most scrupulous care, and where two and a half millions of 
people are kept in order by three battalions of infantry and 
some troops of guards, while Paris requires the presence of 
fifty thousand men." 

The writer already quoted says of the Sabbaths of Italy, 
" They are skilfully adapted for the diversion of a people 
sporting with their chains. We need to seek no further for an 
adequate cause for that enervation of character which renders 
self-government impossible. He who made the Sabbath for man 
has ordained the connection between the sacred d^y and that 
manliness of character which can brook no bonds." 



THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 39 

Montalembert's whole report before a hostile Parliament 
which constantly interrupted him is full of spirit, yet of a pro 
found view of the Sabbath : " We need not hesitate to place in 
the first rank of our dangers and our faults the public profana- 
tion of the Sabbath." " To suppress the Sabbath is, for most 
working-men, to suppress instruction." " The State which tran- 
quilly assists at the undermining of the fundamental principle 
of all society becomes the accomplice of that mining before be- 
coming its victimy 

One hundred of the New- York clergy issued a weighty docu- 
ment, which has these words : " Mail needs the Sabbath physi- 
cally as a season when labor may wipe off its grime, and breathe 
more freely after the week's exhaustion. Man needs it morally to 
rise by its aid out of engrossing secularities. Toil ticeds it to res- 
cue its share of rest and its season of devotion from the absorbing 
despotism of capital ; and capital needs it to shield its ow7i accumu- 
latiojis from the recklessiiess and a?tarchy of an i^nbruted aitd des- 
perate proletaire, and to keep its own humanity and conscience alive. 
The State needs it as a safeguard of the public order, quiet, and 
virtue ; human laws becoming, however wise inform, effete i?t prac- 
tical exercise, except as they are based up07i coiiscience and upon the 
sanctions of eteriiity as recognized by a free people, a?id God's day 
cultivating the one, and ronindijig us of the other. And in a re- 
public 7nore especially, whose liberties, under God, i7there i7i its 
virtues, the recognitio7i freely a?id devoutly by a7i i7istructed 7iation 
of God's paramou7it rights is the moral imderpi7i7ii7ig requisite to 
sustain the superstructure of 77iaii's rights ; a7td without the sup- 
port of religio7i, 7iot as 7iatio7ially established, but as perso7ially 
a7td freely accepted, all hu77ian freedom fi7ially mo^dders, a7id tot- 
ters i7ito irretrievable ruin.'^ 

Pres. Mark Hopkins of Williams College, in a discourse in 
1863 on " The Sabbath and Free Institutions," maintained three 
propositions : — 

" First, A religious observance of the Sabbath, or the religious 
Sabbath, would secure the permanence of free institutions. 

" Seco7id, Without the Sabbath religiously observed, the per- 
manence of free institutions cannot be secured. 



i 



40 TJ/B SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE, 



" Third, The civil as based on the religious Sabbath is an 
institution to which society has a natural right, precisely as it 
has to property." He says, " In my own belief, the comprehen- 
sive reason for this " (Proposition II.) " is, that God will not 
permit it. The "Sabbath is his ; and he will not suffer that the 
highest result of moral forces should be reached, except in 
obedience to him." " History shows, that, where both have 
been in question, the enemies of freedom and of the Sabbath 
have been the same. Here Pilate and Herod have become 
friends. Here infidelity and formalism, despotism and anar- 
chy, join hands." 

A writer in 1833 said, " Why are the French people incapa- 
ble of sustaining free institutions ? Because they have no 
Sabbath. I cannot prevent myself from perceiving that our 
political superiority has its principal source in the exact observ- 
ance of the day of rest." Another writer from Paris, in 1870, 
pens this: "The Paris commune is the ripe fruit of the Paris 
Sunday. Sunday toil on the one hand, and Sunday dissipation 
on the other, are, in no small measure, both cause and conse- 
quence of the social and moral degeneracy which has brought 
on France such fearful disaster." 

Not without reason did Mirabeau exclaim, " God is as neces- 
sary as liberty to the French people." Long ago, Jefferson 
remarked to Webster, on a quiet Sabbath at Monticello, " The 
Sunday schools present the only legitimate means under the 
Constitution of avoiding the rock on which the French Repub- 
lic was wrecked." " Raikes has done more for our country than 
the present generation will acknowledge. Perhaps, when I am 
cold, he will obtain his reward. He is darum et venerabile no- 
111671.'" Webster says of the Sabbath school, "As a civil institu- 
tion it is priceless. It has done more to preserve our liberties 
than grave statesmen and armed soldiers." 

Pierre Duval, a French Catholic, after a visit to the United 
States, wrote of our Sabbath thus : " When I bethink me that 
this medley of men have withdrawn themselves for prayer and 
meditation, I confess that I feel myself impressed. I become 
earnest, religiously disposed. I understand why this people is 



THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 41 

a great people. I know why for a century it has been free, yea, 
the freest people which is found." " As to France, I under- 
stand why this people, so gifted, so great in the past, still so 
rich in the present, suffers and complains. I understand why 
this people, so in love with liberty, is not yet free, and will not 
easily become so. 'Woe to America' (says a church historian) 
' if it ever ceases to keep holy the Lord's Day ! ' Yes, woe to 
America, and woe, then, to liberty ! " 

Thus the State is indebted to the Sabbath, in behalf of her 
multitudinous population, for this fivefold blessing bestowed 
upon them and her. Her children individually reap these 
blessings : the State also, in her corporate life, reaps the same 
blessings. It is not only a benefit to each man that he enjoy 
physical rest, mental relaxation, business prosperity, moral cul- 
ture, and freedom, but it is as needful that the State, for its 
continued existence and vigor, should have in its citizens and 
statesmen physical rest, mental rest, business prosperity, moral 
culture, and liberty. These five are gifts of the Sabbath. The 
State, as such, can take cognizance of these benefits and this 
benefactor, and may not only advise her children to observe so 
wholesome a day for the good of each, but in her sovereign 
capacity she may compel such an observance as shall gratefully 
recognize the benefactor, and as shall not impair the benefits 
which the Sabbath brings to her as a corporate State. 

This has been the view of great legal and judicial minds who 
have not been kept, by the fact that the Sabbath is a religious 
day, from observing that the Sabbath is also a civil institutio7i^ 
of which the State may take cognizance. Pres. Hopkins says, 
" The precise points to which the friends of the Sabbath and 
free institutions should direct their efforts at all times, and with 
special energy in the present hour of peril, are three : They must 
(1) be them.selves careful to keep the Sabbath holy. This is 
indispensable. (2) They must do what they can by moral means 
to promote the intelligence, the morality, and especially the per- 
sonal religion, of individuals. Only religious men will keep the 
Sabbath religiously. (3) They must maintain and defend the 
civil Sabbath as they would any other natural right." 



42 THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 

Attorney-Gen. Bates (under Pres. Lincoln) remarks, " The 
religious character of an institution so ancient, so sacred, so 
lawful, and so necessary to the peace and comfort and the 
respectability of society, ought alone to suffice for its protec- 
tion ; but, that failing, surely the laws of the land made for its 
account ought to be as strictly enforced as the laws for the pro- 
tection of person and property. Vice and crime are always 
progressive and cumulative. If the Sunday laws be neglected 
or despised, the laws ' of person and property will soon share 
their fate, and be equally disregarded." 

Thus the State, without transcending its sphere, nay, in the 
performance of its bounden duty and its imperative obligations, 
is to protect and cherish the " civil Sabbath." In the words of 
Judge Allen, "As a civil and political institution, the establish- 
ment and regulation of the Sabbath is within the just power of 
the civil government." " All interests require national conform- 
ity in the day observed, and that its observance should be so far 
compulsory as to protect those who desire and are entitled to 
the day." 

" Blue Laws " we do not desire on Sabbath-keej5ing. The 
State is to be wise, considerate, and gracious in what she allows 
as well as in what she forbids. Legislators who are statesmen 
know how to enact laws which are strong, and effective of good 
results, and at the same time are considerate. 

The statutes wisely provide, "Whoever conscientiously be- 
lieves the seventh day of 'the week ought to be observed as the 
Sabbath, and actually refrains from secular business, travel, and 
labor on that day, shall not be liable to the penalties of this 
chapter for performing secular business, travel, or labor on the 
Lord's Day, or first day of the ^nq^, provided that he disturbs 
no other person." We would even go so far as to allow these 
persons conscientiously holding the seventh day as commanded 
of God to buy and sell to each other, provided that the store be 
not opened to the front. 

The children of such parents should be treated most gener- 
ously in regard to absence from school on the seventh day, and 
their class-standing should not be affected by their absence. 



THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 43 

But, on the other hand, we believe the just laws of the land 
should be faithfully and strictly and impartially executed as to 
the keeping, by corporations and individuals, of the civil Sabbath, 
which, under the laws of the State, is designated as the Lord's 
Day. Excepting only apothecaries' stores, strictly so called, 
and, for a few hours in the morning, bakers' stores, all shops 
and stores should be made to close on the Sabbath. The sell- 
ing and crying of Sunday papers should be made to cease. All 
shows, exhibitions for making money, all concerts, — excepting 
sacred concerts., in the honest sense of the words, in the legal sense 
of th^ words, where a majority of the time is employed in sacred 
music, — should be abolished, as they are now by law forbidden. 
Public parks and gardens should be open on the Sabbath for 
purposes of rest to the people ; but all exhibitions, menageries, 
shows, and so forth, in them, should be closed. The reading- 
rooms of Christian Associations — a kind of Christian home to 
many — should be open. All public halls and libraries — since 
the necessary attendants must be deprived of the Sabbath, while 
the occupation is really, as a matter of fact, in the nature of men- 
tal labor or amusement, and not of hallowed rest — should be 
closed. Railroad companies, except within a score of miles of 
large cities, for purposes of church attendance, travel for visiting 
hospitals, prisons, &c., should be compelled to desist from travel 
and freighting ; also steamboat companies. Harbor and picnic 
excursions, should be prohibited. Whatever corporation or 
company discharges an official or a workman for refusing to 
perform Sabbath labor should be liable for damages in law. 

Has not the proof been most ample, in all the views taken, 
that the Sabbath is the benefactor of the State 1 Is it not right 
to speak of the "due-ty " of the State to the Sabbath t Is it not 
for the State — finding through commissions of her appointment, 
and b}' the recorded wisdom of profound observers, the value 
of the day of rest, its varied blessings to her citizens, its neces- 
sity to secure republican institutions — to overrule with strong 
hand the lawlessness and ignorance and the cupidity of those 
who advocate the European Sunday, and decree that this 
benefactor shall be continued in her sphere, and be allowed to 



44 THE SABBATH THE BENEFACTOR OF THE STATE. 

continue her benign ministrations to the State ? Can we not 
conceive the whole nation, become truly thoughtful on this 
subject, — from the miner of California and Nevada, the coal- 
worker of Pennsylvania, the careworn merchant of New York, 
the farmer of the West, the planter of the South, and the man- 
ufacturer and mechanic of New England, —rising in solemn 
gratitude to the sentiment, " The Sabbath^ the Nation V Benefac- 
tor " ? And when the Republic and the State decree in the 
words of Webster, " Let it be fostered and protected until 
THE end of time," will not the people, like the voice of many 
waters, say " Amen " ? 



THE GOD OF THE SABBATH A BENE- 
FACTOR TO THE STATE. 



^^ Deus nobis h<zc otia fecit!''' 

The Sabbath itself has been rightly considered as a benefac- 
tor to the State. The blessings of the Sabbath have been found 
to be in five principal directions : I. Physical rest ; II. Mental 
rest \ III. Prosperity in business ; IV. Moral culture and wor- 
ship ; V. Freedom, individual and national. It has b^en fully 
shown that the State, as well as the individual, is indebted to 
the Sabbath. Nothing, we believe, need be added to strengthen 
the impression of the benefits received by the State from the 
weekly day of rest, which have been recounted. 

The previous paper considered the " due-ty " of the State to 
the Sabbath : we now consider the " due-ty " of the State to the 
Lord of the Sabbath. It has been observed, also, that these 
blessings from the sacred day are great, even if we inquire not 
into its origin. What is designed now, in tracing these benefits 
one step farther back, is to show, first, that they have their origin 
in the will of the Creator and Preserver, and hence that the 
duty of State as well as of individual is to preserve and observe 
the day according to the intent of the Personal Founder. The 
point to be established is, that the Sabbath is not " earth born," 
but "heaven-descended." For some of these sugges^iions we 
are indebtfid to Gilfillan. Observe that the argument is entirely 
from nature; and in no respect do we here draw it from revela- 
tion. 45 



46 THE GOD OF THE SABBATH 



I. THE EXTREMELY EARLY INSTITUTION OF THIS DAY IS AN 

EVIDENCE THAT IT CAME, LIKE MAN, FRESH FROM THE HAND 
OF THE MAKER. 

The septenary division of time is ancient and wide-spread. 
*' Laplace assigns to the week a higli antiquity ; and its exist- 
ence among successive generations is held to be a high proof of 
their common origin." 

" The week is, perhaps, the most ancient and incontestable 
monument of human knowledge." " The septenary arrange- 
ment of days," says Scaliger, "was in use among the Orientals 
from the remotest antiquity." "We have reason to believe," 
observes Pres. Goguet, " that the institution of that short 
period of seven days called a week was the first step taken by 
mankind in dividing and measuring their time. We find, from 
time immemorial, the use of this period among all the nations, 
without any variation in the form of it." " Pres. Goguet ob- 
serves, further, that the Israelites, Assyrians, Egyptians, In- 
dians, Arabians, and, in a word, all the nations of the East, 
have, in all ages, made use of a week consisting of seven days. 
We find the same custom among the ancient Romans, Gauls, 
Britons, Germans, the nations of the North and of America." 
Humboldt makes a similar observation. "We add a sentence 
from Humboldt, venturing, however, to premise that the Peru- 
vian ninth day of rest seems to prove a former notation of time 
by weeks even in America. ' It appears,' he remarks, ' that no 
nation of the new continent was acquainted with the week, or 
cycle of seven days, which we find among the Hindoos, the 
Chinese, the Assyrians, and the Egyptians, and which, as Le 
Gentil has very justly remarked, is followed by the greater part 
of the nations of the Old World.' " Proudhon afiirms the same 
universality of the Rest Day : " Especially among the Chinese, 
as appears from this passage of the annals of Sec-Masico, 
* The emperor offered sacrifices to the Supreme Unity, Tog-y, 
every seven days;' and from this still more significant sen- 
tence of Cheri-King, ' All the ancient emperors on the seventh 
day, called the "Great Day," caused the doors of houses to be 



A BENEFACTOR TO THE STATE. 47 

closed. No business was done that day, and the magistrates 
judged no case.' " Proudhon is profoundly moved on dwelling 
upon the universality and solidarity of Sabbath-keeping in all 
lands and ages : " This hebdomadal rest, going back to an 
epoch so remote, perpetuated from age to age until our days, 
appears to us as the profound indication of an act of nature, of 
a providential will. It is not in our power to remain indifferent 
to the thought of the throng of generations which have succes- 
sively made use of this day, in circumstances so diverse, and 
during so many centuries." 

" Many vain conjectures," says Goguet, " have been formed 
concerning the reasons and motives which determined all man- 
kind to agree in this primitive division of their time. Nothing 
but tradition concerning the time employed in the creation of 
the world could give rise to this universal, immemorial prac- 
tice." We know of no man to whom even tradition has 
ascribed this admirable arrangement of week and rest day. No 
one could ascribe a measure so wise, and peculiarly and greatly 
adapted to affect the human race, to a caprice of primitive man 
in the childhood of his being, or to any thing less than the wis- 
dom of the Creator. 

II. ANOTHER EVIDENCE THAT THE SABBATH IS A DIVINE IN- 
STITUTION IS THE PERFECT ADAPTATION OF THE DAY TO THE 
PURPOSES OF REST, OF SACRED REST. 

As we have seen at great length, the day is wonderfully 
adapted to serve the combined purposes, twined together like 
a thread of silver with a thread of gold, of rest and worship. 
It recuperates body of man and beast, and refreshes the mind ; 
and it " restores the soul, leading it in green pastures and by 
still waters." 

No primitive man, no philosopher, could have devised this 
cessation from labor. Proudhon says it is " an institution of 
which our modern genius, with all its theories of civil and politi- 
cal rights, has never reached the height." "Montesquieu," he 
says, " spoke not of it, because he did not comprehend it." 
" No people without a Sabbath have ever of their own impulse 
introduced it." 



48 THE GOD OF THE SABBATH 

" That a seventh day of sacred rest renders the labor of six 
days more remunerative tlian would be that of seven under a sys- 
tem of unremitting toil, and that it interposes a barrier against 
the enslaving of mankind, are proofs of the profound wisdom 
of the institution, which it was reserved for recent times to bring 
into clearer view, if not entirely to discover. It is one thing, 
moreover, to see and unfold the merits of a discovery, and 
altogether another to make it. To the origination, in short, of 
an institution proved to be adapted to the whole constitution 
and circumstances of mankind, there was indispensable so large 
a measure of knowledge, that the claim, by the Author of the 
Sabbath, to omniscience itself, would be no arrogance, and his 
exercise of the attribute no difficulty." 

Some one has followed out the well-known argument of Paley 
in regard to sleep, applying it to the Sabbath. " Paley has 
deduced an argument for this world being the work of an Intel- 
ligent Cause from the relation of sleep to night. He says, ' It 
appears to me to be a relation which was expressly intended. 
Two points are manifest : first^ that the animal frame requires 
sleep ; secondly^ that night brings with it a silence, and a cessa- 
tion of activity, which allows of sleep being taken without 
interruption and without loss.' But what the rest of sleep is 
to the body the repose of the Sabbath is to both body and soul." 

III. ANOTHER PROOF THAT GOD IS THE AUTHOR OF THE 

SABBATH IS, THAT IT IS SUCH A DAY AS GOD, AND NOT 
MAN, WOULD MAKE. 

"The sanctity of the Sabbath is a further evidence of its 
divine original. The ordinance is far too sacred for human 
beings to desire, or even to think of." "The Sabbath was evi- 
dently made for man, but not by man. Its Author must have 
been divinely holy, as well as divinely benignant, intelligent, and 
wise." Dr. Croly says, "The divine origin of the Sabbath might 
be almost proved from its opposition to the lower propensities of 
mankind. In no age of the world, since labor was known, would 
any master of the serf, the slave, or the cattle, have spontaneous- 
ly given up a seventh part of their toil. No human legislator 



A BENEFACTOR TO THE STATE. 49 

would have proposed such a law of property; or, if he had, no 
nation would have endured it. The Sabbath in its whole char- 
acter is so strongly opposed to the avarice, the heartlessness, 
and the irreligion of man, that, except in the days of Moses and 
Joshua, it has never been observed with due reverence by any 
nation in the world." "If," says " The London Times," "the 
sacred character of the day be once obscured, there would not 
remain behind any influence strong enough to keep a thrifty 
tradesman from his counter for twelve hours together. A man 
who would observe the day as a Sabbath would retrench it as a 
holiday; and thus competition and imitation would at length 
bring all to the common level of universal profaneness and con- 
tinuous toil." J. Stuart Mill says, " Operatives are perfectly 
right in thinking, that, if all worked on Sunday, seven days' work 
would have to be given for six days' wages." 

IV. ANOTHER INDICATION THAT THE SABBATH IS THE GIFT 

OF GOD IS, THAT IT IS FOUND FLOURISHING IN GREATEST 
VIGOR IN ISRAEL. 

Israel, to say the least, appears and claims to have been a na- 
tion divinely led. The oracles of this nation ascribe the Sabbath 
to God ; first, as a memorial of his cessation from creation, in 
which, as an example to his creatures to be made in his image, 
he seems to have first acted and then spoken anthropomorphi- 
cally ; and, second, as the commencement of the exodus. The 
clearer the type, the nearer the foundry. Israel's clear com- 
mands and careful Sabbath-keeping show the origin of the day 
in Israel's God. 

V. ONE MORE EVIDENCE THAT GOD MADE THE SABBATH IS 

THE EXACTNESS OF THE ADAPTATION OF THE REST DAY TO 
GIVE THE NEEDED REFRESHMENT. 

How fared France while she worshipped the Goddess of 
Reason, and kept her tenth-days, her decadis ? Not well. They 
came back to the old seventh day ordained by a higher Reason, 
who "sees the end from the beginning." 

Proudhon exclaims, " What statistician could have first dis- 



50 THE GOD OF THE SABBATH 

covered, that, in ordinary times, the period of labor ought to be 
to the period of rest in the ratio of six to one ?" He expounds 
Pythagoras' doctri?ie of crises^ who, as he says, first brought cal- 
culation into the study of man ; then he says, " Moses, then, 
having to regulate in a nation the labors and the days, the rests 
and the festivals, the toils of the body and the exercises of the 
soul, the interests of hygiene and of morals, political economy 
and personal subsistence, had recourse to a science of numbers, 
to a transcendental harmony^ which embraced all space, duration, 
movement, spirits, bodies, the sacred and the profane. The 
certainty of the science is demonstrated by the result. Diminish 
the week by a single day, the labor is insufficient relatively to 
the repose ; augment it in the same, quantity, it becomes exces- 
sive. Establish every three days and a half a half-day of relaxa- 
tion, you multiply, by the breaking of the day, the loss of time ; 
and, in shattering the natural unity of the day, you break the 
numerical equilibrium of things. Accord, on the contrary, forty- 
eight hours of repose after twelve consecutive days of labor, you 
kill the man by inertia, after having exhausted him by fatigue." 
And he says pithily, that one might as philosophically ascribe 
such an invention to primitive man as believe " the fable of the 
sow writing the Iliad with her snout." ^ 

With this discovery, that the day of rest is of divine appoint- 
ment, what new dut}^ imposes itself upon individuals, and upon 
the State acting wisely for her citizens ? 

Even were the Sabbath only a chance, or, as the Pantheist 
might dream, some exquisite flowering of the All, still it would 
be a benefactor, and as such, in the words of Webster, to be 
" fostered and protected until the end of time." In that case 
we are left to our own experiment and reason to devise the 
best means to make the benefactions of the day most availa- 
ble. 

But with the discovery that there is a Personal Founder of the 
Sabbath, and that this rest day is a gift from him to the human 
race, two things follow as to the keeping of the day both by indi- 
viduals and by States. 

* Proudhon, Pierre Joseph : Du Dimanche : Hygiene, Morale, Famille, Cit^. 



A BENEFACTOR TO THE STATE. 51 

First, Gratitude woidd lead us to observe his wishes and intent 
in giving the day. If a benevolent man has made a wise will, 
the recipient of his favors, unless there are powerful reasons to 
the contrary, should use the bequests according to his intent 
who gave them. 

Second, Prudence would lead us to observe his wishes a7id inte?it 
in giving the day. We were not wise enough to devise the Sabbath : 
we are ?iot wise e7iough to use the Sabbath. We need some God 
to tell us. There is some machine constructed which only one 
supreme genius, some James Watt, could have designed. We 
need the same genius to explain to us how to work his machine. 
The nearer we get to the mind of God, the more we, state or 
individuals, shall receive "his favor, which is life," in observ- 
ing it, and the more wisely shall we use the Sabbath, as states 
and individuals, to gain all the benefits which the Divine Invent- 
or intended. 

In this paper, as in the preceding, it is not to be overlooked 
that the argument is aimed at the duty of the State as a cor- 
porate body, a " moral personality," in relation to the Lord of 
the Sabbath. It is true, we may well believe, that each individ- 
ual has a religious duty to the Sabbath and its Divine Founder. 
It is true, moreover, that each citizen has a personal duty to the 
Sabbath, as one of a community, and of that community, the 
State. It is well for the Sabbath-breaking citizen to reflect, in 
the light of all the foregoing considerations, that it is indeed 
hardly figures of speech to say, that, whenever he takes the reins 
for a Sabbath pleasure-drive, he, like Phaethon, snatches the reins 
which guide our nation in a safe course; whenever he patron- 
izes a cigar-store on that day, he puffs into smoke part of the 
Magna Charta of our liberties ; whenever he rushes in car or 
steamship over land or sea, he is, so far as he is concerned, 
just so fast rushing this nation to destruction ; that, when he is 
attending a so-called " Sunday concert," what he hears is not 
music, but the clinking of some future American's chain. The 
citizen, then, has his personal duties to the State as one of 
her children in connection with the observance of the Sab- 
bath. Yet our argument is mainly insisting, let it be distinctly 



52 THE GOD OF THE SABBATH 

observed, on the duty of the State, the corporate body, which, 
as truly as mdividuals, has eyes and discernment and duties, to 
secure the observance of the civil Sabbath within her bounds, 
by compulsory and protective measures if need be, lest, in 
offending her Divine Benefactor, and breaking the laws he has 
imposed,upon nature, she drop from the firmament like a lost 
star. 

Nothing can be more truly rational, then, than for the States, 
as well as individuals, to become little children, and discern 
profoundly, and obey carefully, the spirit and intent of the de- 
cree and statute of the Great King, which reads thus in the 
nature of things as well as in a certain revered book : — 

" Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy. Six 
days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work ; but the 

SEVENTH DAY IS THE SaBBATH OF THE LORD THY GOD : in it 

thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son^ nor thy daugh- 
ter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor 
thy stranger that is within thy gates. For in six days the 
Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, 
and rested the seventh day : wherefore the Lord blessed the 
Sabbath Dav, and hallowed it." 

" Six days shall work be done ; but the seventh day 
IS THE Sabbath of rest, a holy convocation : it is the 
Sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings." 

Let us not forget, because we are growing to be a giant nation, 
with thirty-eight stars instead of thirteen in our sky in our 
Centennial year, that a medal of our early history had the 
motto, "iVb;z sine Diis animosus infafisT Let us not imagine, 
because we rest securely between the two oceans, and lay our 
hands on the AUeghanies and the Sierras, that we are too great 
a nation to obey the Almighty Father. Babylon and the em- 
pires in ruins may become the prototypes of our '' decline and 
fall." That gloomy and heart-shattering word may be written on 
our palace-walls as on Babylon's, — ^''Tekel : Weighed, Wanting." 

For He still lives who turned them to destruction ; and to 
States as well as to men his word applies, '' Them that honor 
me I will honor ; but they that despise me shall be lightly 
esteemed." 



A BENEFACTOR TO THE STATE. 53 

For in the olden time, for three-quarters of a century, the 
lonely sun looked down on a land bereft of her brave sons and 
fair daughters, who by the waters of Babylon were singing to 
the plaintive music of their exiled harps, — a land without 
wheat-field or vineyard-terrace as of yore, but over whose li- 
chened orchards, and weed-grown acres, and dilapidated land- 
marks, moved a voice as of One that is mighty, in words as of 
divine sarcasm, ^^As long as she lay desolate, the land kept Sab- 
bath threescore years and ten^ Yet once before, and once after- 
ward, that people " sat under their own vine and fig-tree," and 
" called the Sabbath a delight." 

" The Lord rested the seventh day," " blessed the Sabbath 
Day, and hallowed it." What will the State do with the Sabbath 
Day? 

'' I SAT DOWN UNDER HiS SHADOW WITH GREAT DELIGHT.'* 



THE STATE AND TEMPLES. 



TAXING GOD'S HOUSE. 



This essay appeared in "The Congregationalist," Feb. i8, 1875. 

A year later, in "The New-York Herald," March 7, 1876, appeared 

Gen. Dix's spirited and powerful letter ; extracts from which 

having fallen under the eye of the writer, an interchange of 

papers and a pleasant correspondence took place, from which I 

take the liberty to make extracts, as also from the noble words 

of his public letter. 

New York, 10 April, 1876. 

Reverend and dear Sir, — I have read with great satisfaction your 
article in " The Congregationalist," which you had the kindness to send me, 
on "Taxing God's House." The coincidence of the currents of thought in 
your article and mine is certainly remarkable, the more so as I thought our 
side of the question had never been presented before. . . . 

Very truly yours, John A. Dix. 

There is great danger, as has already become apparent, that 
the matter of taxing places of worship should be put upon false 
ground, or at least low ground ; far below that upon which it 
ought to be argued ; far below where it can be argued with most 
safety and cogency, and least friction of dissent ; far below the 
plane where every religious mind — and all minds, we are told, 
are religious — would feel that the matter rests. 

The subject is debated under this title, " The Taxation of 
Churches.^^ The arguments here, indeed, in favor of immunity 
from taxes to churches, vastly preponderate. But who that 
listens to argument on this subject from the benefits to society 
has not had a secret dissatisfaction, and the feeling that there 

57 



58 TAXING GOD'S HOUSE. 

must be higher ground than this, which accounts for our strong 
repugnance to entertaining the idea of taxing our temples ? ^ 

This ground has, perhaps, been dimly seen ; but some have 
not pressed forward to hold it, partly from the pitiful dread of 
appealing to the common moral sentiments of mankind. 

Let us restate the question in its true form ; not, " Shall we 
tax churches V but, "Shall we tax God^s house V Edifices con- 
secrated to the Supreme Being — -is it comely to subject them to 
the levying of tax to pay the expenses of human government ? 
Shall men take that gift which they have placed above their 
heads at the feet of the Supreme, and make it pay tribute ? 
Let six of the most accomplished debaters of the land argue 
this question strictly, "Is it right to tax God^s house ? ^^ ^ 2ind 
the whole subject would lie in so clear light in all minds, that 
this crepuscule of thought upon it would have vanished utterly. 

The principle at root is, that what is rightfully given up to a 
higher Power is beyond our plane or level. Is it not the same 
principle, that it would be uncomely for the State to tax the Navy- 
Yard, or the Springfield Armory, or any other property formally 
committed to a higher Power? United- States property is high 
above all transactions of levying and collection for State ex- 
penses. So our church-edifices are more than "meeting- 
houses : " they are " houses of God," formally consecrated to a 
higher Power. " Render therefore to God the things th'at are 
God's." 

It was, of course, competent to the States out of which the 
District of Columbia was formed to cede or to retain that terri- 
tory ; but, once ceded, that tract of land belonged to the General 

1 " The politico-economical side of the question had been exhausted by Pres. Eliot of Har- 
vard University, and by Mr. Andrews, one of our city assessors, in a series of able articles in 
the New- York Times ; and I thought it due to the importance of the subject to present the 
religious side. I thought, too, that the prevailing disregard of the sacred character of 
houses of worship justified stronger language than I am accustomed to use in the discussion 
of ordinary questions of policy or principle." — John A. Dix, Correspondence. 

2 " In manifold instances, both in the Old and New Testaments, a house of worship is 
called the house of God ; and it is always named with appropriate expressions of reverence. 
The universal heart responds to this designation : and, no matter how humble the edifice 
consecrated to his service, all men, when within its hallowed walls, feel more sensibly than they 
do amid the turmoil of the outer world that they are in the presence of the Omnipotent Being 
by whom the great forces of the universe are moved and controlled ; and that, by ignoring 
him, they renounce all hope of a higher state of existence." — John A. Dix: Letter to New 
York Herald, March 7, 1876. 



TAXING GOD'S HOUSE. 59 

Government. It is competent to the State to say how much 
land, and how much of wealth and worth, shall be allowed to a 
house of worship ; but, once dedicated to God, it should be beyond 
taxation. It is also competent to the State to limit, as should 
be done, the dedication to the mere house of worship^ and to 
forbid the withholding from taxation of church-lands or other 
property ; as also, if she choose, to tax the separate pews as 
the property of the individual owners. 

The State might draw a legal distinction, if it be not drawn 
already, between dedication and consecratio72, allowing only those 
religious edifices to be dedicated which are to be legally exempt 
from taxation, and considering as merely consecrated all such 
religious property as men have given up, so far as they are con- 
cerned, to a higher use, but which the State does not consider 
beyond taxation. Thus church edifices o?ily, and such buildings 
as are actually employed for Sabbath instruction in the things 
of God, should be allowed to be dedicated in the legal sense. 
We all pray to be delivered from such a state of things as has 
existed in all countries of large monastic endowments ; for ex- 
ample, in France at the time of the Revolution, as described by 
Geffcken : " Add to this a vast host of ecclesiastical sinecures, 
without reckoning, indeed, the numerous and often very opulent 
monastic foundations, which were in a frightful state of decay. 
The crown had confiscated many of these as royal demesnes, 
but had granted them as benefices, exempt from all obligations ; 
and they had offered to youthful ecclesiastics belonging to noble 
families an income adequate to their rank, until a suitable 
bishopric should fall vacant. Bestowed as they were by those 
who were powerful at court, it is easy to imagine the crowd of 
elegant abbes that surrounded a Madame de Pompadour. The 
whole enormous aggregate of ecclesiastical property — the rev- 
enue of which was estimated at a hundred million livres derived 
from tithes, and from sixty million to seventy million livres de- 
rived from landed possessions — was absolutely exempt from 
taxation. The clergy gave to the State a few millions as a 
gratuity {do?t gratuit), but resisted with the bitterest indignation 
any attempt to subject their estates to the universal obligation 
of taxation; and as late as 1788, when the financial embarass- 



6o TAXING GOD'S HOUSE. 

ments of the nation and the misery of the lower orders had 
reached their dimax, their reply to a demand of that kind, 
returned not in a synod, but in an assembly convoked for 
secular purposes, was this : ' Ces biens sont voues, consacres 
d Dieu. Notre conscience et notre honneur ne nous permet- 
tent pas de consentir a changer en tribut necessaire ce qui 
ne peut etre que I'offrande de notre amour.' ' This proper- 
ty is devoted, consecrated to God. Our conscience and our 
honor do not permit us to consent to make an obligatory trib- 
ute that which can be only the offering of our love.' " ^ 

This enormous evil, of large church properties exempted, 
can be prevented by allowing legal dedication only to church 
edifices, temples for the worship of God. 

But it may be said, if the house is dedicated to God, then the 
protection of it belongs to him. The State should not be taxed 
for care of it, just as the United States, after the ceding of the 
Navy-Yard, requires no further care for it from Massachusetts. 

The answer is simple, that the State may properly, in consid- 
eration of the supreme majesty of the God to whom all temples 
are consecrated, give guard and protection, without compensa- 
tion, to all his temples. Were there an extensive, raging fire 
at the Charlestown Navy-Yard, the state or the cities might, if 
they chose, properly give the service of their fire departments for 
its extinguishment. Had " The Brandyv/ine " been donated to 
the illustrious Lafayette, the State might properly freely have 
given the whole of her police force to guard it, without exacting 
any tax in return from the distinguished stranger. The claim is 
not valid, then, that, because in some sort ceded to God, the 
temple should not, therefore, receive the State's protection 
without compensation or tax. 

Even Rome regarded all worship.^ Dionysius of Halicar- 
nassus says, " Men of a thousand nations come to the city, and 
must worship the gods of their country according to the laws at 

^ Geffcken : Church and State, ii. 472. 

2 " From that day to this, during the lapse of nearly sixteen hundred years, no gov- 
ernment has undertaken to make church edifices pay tribute for the privilege of worshipping 
God. Even the pagans, through the veneration in which they held the ternples dedicated to 
their idols, manifest more reverence than the promoters of this raid upon religious worship." — 
Letter to Herald, 



TAXING GOD'S HOUSE. 61 

home." There were many religmies licUce and dei puhlice adsciti. 
Their houses of worship were not taxed. 

From his own rehgious point of view, inutatis mutajidis, this 
principle, it is beheved, will strike every man as according to 
the universal feeling of reverence. 

This will be the natural view of the Christian and the Israel- 
ite. Imagine the taxation of the Holy of Holies to support 
Solomon's fish-ponds ! It is not comely for governmental 
exactors to cross the threshold of the " Father's house." -^ 
Christ did not deem it a thing to be borne, that money trans- 
actions should go on in God's temple, even when auxiliary to an 
offering to God : how much more had government-officers, 
exacting from God to the State, entered there ! 

But atheists, pantheists, and idolaters, it is thought, would 
not allow this principle. How unduly afraid we are to trust to 
the religious nature in man which we are constantly asserting 
to be there ! If to that which any man reveres as the Supreme, 
be it to a known or an "unknown god," he build an altar, pillar, 
temple, joss-house, pagoda, mosque, pantheon, or whatever, that 
structure, consecrated to his Supreme,' every man's religious 
sense tells him should not be subjected to profane mingling 
with barter, trade, or taxes. Let Mr. Emerson erect an altar to 
the "Over-Soul," and his fellows assemble for prayer, the 
"highest meditation," the Chinaman his joss-house, the Ger- 
man atheist his hall formally consecrated to Aletheia or 
Humanitas : exempt those edifices, exempt the chapel of the 
Parsee and of the serpent worshipper. 

" But," said one to me, " the steamer of the Japanese in 
which they perform river-worship — would you exempt that?" 
Certainly, if publicly and permanently consecrated to their 
Supreme. "Render to God that which is God's," to Cassar 
only that which is Caesar's. The main principle in the matter 
is, not that the joss-house, or the sacred vessel, or the church, is 

^ " The Divine Founder of our faith gave an impressive proof of his conception of the 
sacred character of edifices consecrated to the service of God by driving the monejf-changers 
cut of the temple, — the only act of violence in his meek and compassionate life; and I trust 
we shall hav^i courage and reverence enough to imitate his example, and prevent the money- 
changers froia getting a foothold in our houses of worship, and converting them into dens of 
thieves." — Letter to Herald. 



62 TAXING GOD'S HOUSE. 

of advantage to society, but rather, that, by common reverence of 
men, the house consecrated to worship of the Supreme is above 
taxation to support government among beings who are atoms 
in presence of the Supreme and Holy One. 

Imagine such a picture as Nast might draw of the exactors 
of the king assessing the furniture of the Most Holy Place, — 
even the cherubim on the mercy-seat, — Jehovah's house pay- 
ing taxes to King Solomon ! 

We have only restated the question for wiser thinkers to 
discuss, " Is it right to tax God's house ? " ^ 

1 It is with pleasure that the writer adds further coincident thoughts from the noble letter 
of Gen. Dlx, not sorry to draw attention to these constellations of thoughts, worthier, though 
here sunk below the horizon-line : — 

" The scheme should be repudiated and denounced in all its parts. One can hardly debate 
it without a feeling of debasement. It is not a subject for human logic ; it is not a problem 
of profit and loss, to be argued by religious obligation on one side, and cupidity on the other. 
It is a matter of instinct, of inborn reverence, of the consciousness which every mind not 
perverted by the sophistications of worldly science has of its own imrneasurable inferiority 
to the Sovereign Ruler of the universe, and of the homage it owes him as its Creator and 
Redeemer. There is something revolting to the moral sense in its normal state in the idea of 
making a mercenary profit out of an edifice consecrated to his service. When this inner 
sense is wanting, argument is useless. 

"The most attractive objects which meet us in our travels in Europe are the cathedrals. 
Amid all the wars, the bloodshed, the barbarities, the desolation, which nations have visited 
upon each other under the misguidance of their evil passions, these monuments of their faith 
and their devotion come out from the dark background of the picture in bright relief as 
sacred tributes to the Creator of the universe. No man can stand beneath their domes and 
vaulted roofs without feeling that they atone for much of the wrong committed by their 
authors, who lavished on them without stint the wealth they would otherwise have wasted on 
ostentatious gratifications or unholy indulgences. Heaven forbid that the lesson of these 
comparatively uncivilized ages should be lost on us, and that, in this day of intellectual light 
and social refinement, the tax-gatherer should be sent to fill his bag of lucre by levying con- 
tributions on the sanctuaries of the living God! 

" I do not believe that any community which seeks to throw its burden of secular expenses 
on the worship of God, by levying contributions on the edifices consecrated tp his services, can 
long escape the chastisement it provokes. It is not necessary to look for special visitations of 
ill as manifestations of his displeasure. Cupidity, selfishness, rapacity, the profanation of 
things which should be held sacred, carry with them, by the force of immutable laws, the 
retribution denounced by the codes they violate. 

"All religious denominations have the same interest in preventing their houses of worship 
from becoming desecrated and secularized by taxation. As was beautifully expressed by Madame 
de Stael, 'Their ceremonies are strongly contrasted; but the same sigh of distrust, the same 
petition for support, ascends to heaven from all.' It seems to me that this whole movement 
is calculated to create in the breasts of reflecting persons a feeling of profound sorrow and 
unmitigated disgust. The proper mode of treating it is to scout it out of the committee- 
rooms, legislative halls, and social circles which it has defiled by its presence. To give it any 
countenance would be to furnish new ground for the national reproach too often cast upon us, 
that the almighty dollar is the chief object of our adoration." — John A. Dix: New-York 
Herald, 



THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 



f 



1 



THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 



Driven by the necessities of close thinking, and by eagerness 
to penetrate to the heart of the important subject named above, 
— for the maxim is evermore true, " He who would pile high must 
dig deep," — we found ourselves pushing beyond the Ultima 
Thule of all we could find written on this subject, and indeed 
beyond all methods of analysis of the subject, and reading 
Heard's "Tripartite Nature of Man," and Delitzsch's "Biblical 
Psychology," and sections of Julius Miiller on " Sin," and pon- 
dering especially the distinction between the spirit and the soul. 
This distinction, we believe, is at che root of the separation of 
Church and State. 

We need not dwell tediously upon the " spirit " and the 
"soul." To have drawn attention to the discrimination of the 
two is, perhaps, sufficient : at least, abstruse, extended discus- 
sion of the nature of man is not needful or in place here. Yet, 
on second thought, perhaps it is best — considering the exceed- 
ing practical value of this discrimination, and yet that very 
little is made of it in popular works — to enter a little more 
deeply than the ordinary reader will enjoy into the distinction 
between 

THE SOUL AND THE SPIRIT. 

We warn the popular reader that we are about to enter upon 
several pages of metaphysical dulness, which we invite him to 
skip to commence at once upon the argument. But the thorough 
student will wish to understand this distinction sufficiently to 

65 



66 THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 

appreciate its reality and importance, and how it underlies the 
subject we are handling. Hence this dull metaphysical section, 
which we would willingly have thrown into an appendix, were it 
not that it is properly prefatory to the subject, and therefore 
in place just here. Allowing the popular reader to pass on to 
the argument, with the student we dwell a moment on the soul 
and the spirit. 

The profound thinkers, before noted, all arrive at that impor- 
tant discrimination of the spirit from the soul. The spirit 
seems to be man's inner personality and individuality, detached 
from nature and creation, from his body and from the universe : 
soul seems to be the spirit as attached and connected, and 
resident in nature and in the body, and as modified by nature. 

Plain men understand the " spirit " best by observing how, 
apart from philosophical study, they naturally and unconsciously 
discriminate it from "soul." Though the qualities of the spirit 
derive very easily to the soul, so that we can say " a generous 
spirit^'' " a generous soul,^^ yet that the words are not synony- 
mous is seen from the fact that they are not interchangeable in 
such expressions as " a holy spirit," " a keen spirit," " a dis- 
cerning spirit," "a wise spirit," where the word "soul" could 
not properly be used ; from the fact, also, that this reference 
to the inner, detached personality passes over into the word 
"spirit," used to express the mood of the "spirit" itself; as, " He 
acted in a devout spirit," " He criticised in an appreciative 
spirit." 

Other simple ways of studying these two words in discrimi- 
nation is to observe that we speak of " disembodied spirits,''^ 
rather than disembodied souls; that the demons are called 
" evil spirits,^^ not souls. 

The Scriptures move with the ease of perfect understanding, 
and of unconsciousness of difficulty in this discrimination. 
They speak, indeed, of ^''dividing aswider soul and spirit." 
Thus man became a living soul ; that is, a spirit put into and 
living in nature. "Try the spirits;" that is, the personal o^dX^- 
ties of those in contact with us. " The first man was made a 
living soul : the last man is a quickening spirit." "God is a 



THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 67 

Spirit ; " that is, a being above nature. When we conceive of 
God as immanent in nature., we call him the " Soul of all 
things," or, as Emerson does, "the Over-Soul." In soul there 
is always reference to the personality as dwelling in nature, and 
as adapted to that nature-life. 

The "Holy Spirit," not the Holy Soul. 

From such ways of discriminating, we come to the clear 
sense that spirit is the pure personality by and in which one is 
what he is ; by which he discerns, and is in contact with or 
repulsion from, other personalities, whether they be equal, 
inferior, superior, or the Supreme. The spirit is man in his 
power to know his own personality ; to comprehend the quality 
of other beings, and hold converse with them ; above all, with 
God. Delitzsch says the spirit is "that whereby he becomes 
evident to himself, recognizes his own distinct individuality, is 
conscious of himself, the divine image in man, the principle of 
his personality." As to the soul, Miiller defines it "the per- 
sonal life of the individual, Ichlebe?!, arising from the entrance 
of the spirit into the earthly organ of the body." 

Now, from the preceding considerations, there is no doubt 
that the spirit, as everywhere represented in Scripture, is the 
fountain of divine life to the whole being ; because by the Holy 
Spirit, or God in his quickening personality, man's perverted 
personality is rectified, restored to its original, namely, a minia- 
ture " likeness " of the Divine Personality, so in accord with 
the Divine Personality, and therefore, for the first time, receiv- 
ing an inflow or " communion " of the Divine Personality. 

It is in the spirit that man cries, " Abba, Father." " The Spirit 
bearcth witness with our spirit.'^ The two personalities, divine 
and human, meet in harmony, and therefore in mutual recogni- 
tion of their harmony. 

The soul is properly reached, controlled, moulded, by the 
spirit. There is philosophy in the consecution, " I pray God 
your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless." 
The spirit ripples out the qualities of its personality into soul 
and body. On the other hand, body and soul, containing some- 
what of God not in the spirit, may have something of good to 



68 THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 



ripple back into the spirit. But, at the last, man's spirit from 
within is to form all which he is, or is to be, — even the body in 
its transient acts ; as we speak of " the spiritual look " on the 
face. 

Christ was once asked, Clement tells us, when the end would 
come. Part of his threefold answer was, " When that which is 
without is as that which is within^ 

But now observe carefully^ as needful to discussion of the topic. 
State and Church, that it by no means follows, because one's own 
spirit is the formative power of his own soul and his own body, 
that therefore a7iother''s spirit^ in the divine order, is to be allowed 
to control and form the soul and body of the first. 

Further is it to be cojtsidered, that there is so much of God in 
nature, in the body and the soul, which is not in the spirit, — 
nature being divine, since from God, — that it is not a certain 
thing that a man's spirit at any particular time is superior in 
character to his soul and body. The reverse may be true, — that 
his body and soul, his human 7iature, may be nobler than his 
spirit. This is often seen. One may be a disobedient £".pirit, 
but a noble soul. We sometimes appeal from the man's evil 
spirit to his nobler soul, his more generous nature. Therefore, 
before absolutely subjugating one's soul to one's spirit, wise 
were it, needful indeed is it, to be sure that the formative spirit 
invoked is superior to the soul. To form society, one must be 
sure the spirit he invokes is equal to nature, is plenitudinous 
and multitudinous as nature ; in other words, is the Holy Spirit, 
who " knows the mind of God," in nature. Nature may be 
stronger, nobler, because God is infallibly in it, tlian any other 
spirit, or even than that Spirit if hindered so that he have not 
" free course." It might not be safe to invoke the spirit of Na- 
poleon to form all society and government ; but it might give 
a glow of satisfaction to see a colossal representation of Thor- 
waldsen's " Christ in Benediction " on our national capitol, 
invoked as the spirit which should mould nation and govern- 
ment. " Try the spirit," be sure it has a right to subordinate 
all nature to it, before you undertake to subordinate all nature 
to it. 



THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 69 

One must also Jtote, as necessary to this discussion, that the 
soul has so much of spirit in it, and so much of nature — in 
which God is — in it, that it has a certain moral life and moral 
conduct. It has not direct sense of God's personality, except 
as an observed fact : that belongs to spirit alone. But the soul 
is competent to perceive God'^ work^ and thence have inference 
of his existence and character, and 

" Look through nature up to nature's God." 

The soul can perceive God's laws and moral order, and observe 
them. Luther says, " The natural man is one who, though he 
stands apart from grace, is still endowed to the fullest degree 
with understanding, sense, capacity, and art." So Aristotle, 
" Soul is that by which we live, feel or perceive, will, move, and 
understand." " Thus," says Heard, ^'^ {\\q psyc/ie^^ [soul] "is the 
sum total of man's natural powers, the life as born into the 
world, and all that it contains, or can attain unto." "The 
psyche is the life of man in its widest and most inclusive sense, 
embracing not only the animal, but also the intellectual and 
moral faculties, in so far as their exercise has not been depraved 
by the fall." " It is exactly where Aristotle leaves off that the 
Scripture begins to treat of human nature, and tells us of a 
faculty — let us call it God-consciousness" [we should say more 
widely perso7taHty 'Conscio\isn^ss'\ — "which is dead or dormant 
in a great degree " [we should say dormant only, and that mainly 
as towards God], " and which " [as towards God and spirits 
renewed in his image] " it is the office and work of the Holy 
Spirit, first to quicken, and then to direct, sanctify, and govern." 

The thought to be dwelt upon is this : the natural man may 
know about God, and m^ay recognize his moral order in the 
world, and observe it, and regard him as the Author and Gov- 
ernor of that moral order : the spiritual man knows God lii7nself, 
his spirit being in accord with the Divine Spirit. 

This distinction of spirit and soul, natural and spiritual, has 
great uses in one's personal spiritual life ; valuable homiletic 
uses also. We are now observing that it underlies the separa- 
tion of Church and State. 



70 THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 

We may seem to have dwelt too long on this distinction 
between spirit and soul, the spiritual and natural man, — here 
we believe for the first time clearly drawn as the thought at the 
root of the separation of Church and State, — but no longer time 
than many a bulkier volume spends upon preliminaries not one 
tithe as important. This distinction would have aided Vinet to 
answer more summarily and satisfactorily the objection over 
which he wearil}^ labors, made to his theory of the separation 
of Church and State, — the objection that "the State ought to 
reproduce the entire man, which it cannot do in the separation 
of Church and State." Holding, as that great thinker did with 
singular clearness, that religion, personal religion, is of the ijidi- 
viduai, and therefore not to be attributed to an organization, he 
said clearly to this objection, " The State ca7inot have personal 
religion, which is the predicate of individuality ; " but with this 
distinction prominent to his mind,^ of the natural man and the 
spiritual man, he might have gained greater clearness as to the 
true and full connection of God and religion with the State, and 
summarily have answered the objector, — The State is a natu7'al 
man ejitire, — "one great stature of an honest man," as Milton 
says, — and can therefore have natural religio7t, that recognition 
of God, righteousness, morality, which is identical and common 
in all natural, psychical men. 

Dry and uninteresting, abstract and abstruse, then, as this 
discussion may thus far have seemed, we believe our time has 
not been wasted. The French Directory were impatient at the 
slow and tedious work by which the youthful Napoleon got his 
artillery into position before Toulon ; but, when that work was 
done. Little Gibraltar was untenable, and Toulon was evacuated. 
So these distinctions between spirit and soul may have been 
tedious ; but by them is found untenable the domination of the 
State by the Church, or of the Church by the State. 

We foreshadow our argument in two paragraphs. 

In the superiority of the spiritual to its natural, and its 
legitimate control over its own natural as its formative, guid- 

^ vinet, it is just to say, comes nearest to glimpses of this distinction, — e.g., pp. 242, 258; 
but he does not state it, least of alt insist on it. 



THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 71 

ing, and corrective power, arises the plausible demand for the 
domination of the State by the Church. 

On the other hand, in the fact that the natural is in its 
sphere, no less than the spiritual, a true life, — represented in 
governments and institutions, — which recognizes God and a 
divine order, and a divine law ; and in the fact that no one 
spirit has so recovered itself and elevated itself as to be worthy 
to subject and form the natural life in nations, and generally in 
the earth ; that no spiritual organization is so recovered and 
elevated as worthily to subject and form all nations ; that the 
one Spirit who was perfect, and endued with dominant power, 
permitted and respected the natural as divine in its sphere, and 
never sought to impose his spiritual dominion, perfect and pow- 
erful as it was, upon nations and governments as such, — arises 
the counter-claim and valid consideration, that the State should 
be free from the Church. The above is the g:-neral view before 
our minds as we proceed. 

STATE AND CHURCH. 

Let us commence here : The State is not to he dominated by the 
Church. This Pius IX. emphatically denies.-^ 

Here we pause to asseverate, in the amplest and most decided 
manner, that we draw a distinction between Romanism and 
Catholicism. We have no conflict with Catholics in religion, 
nor with Catholicism, nor with Pius IX. as the " Holy Father," 
so called, of a large class. Our conflict, in which w^e have the 
company of many of the noblest Catholics, the living and the 
dead, — our conflict is with Romanism, which, in its very first 
principles^ is an enemy to the independence of nations. In 
Bismarck's words, " I have to deal here with politics, and not 
with dogmas." 

But we return to repeat, Pius IX. emphatically denies that the 
State ought to be independent of the domination of the Church. 

Here we are obliged to make another pause to draw attention to 
the remarkable fact, the delusive fact to many, that not only 
newspaper editors, but some of the highest dignitaries, bishops, 

» Syllabus, §§ 55, 77, 78. 



72 THE STATE AND THE CHURCH 

archbishops, and even cardinals, in the Romish Church, deny in 
the most positive manner that the Papacy assumes to control 
governments. But, be it observed, no pope was ever known to 
make such a denial. History, Jesuits, strict Romanists, all 
agree with the Papacy ; and the Papacy understands itself ; and, 
meanwhile, the denials of cardinals and all '■'■minora sidera^'' go 
for absolutely nothing. 

Very emphatic and weighty, too, are these denials of Roman- 
ists : strong as Doric pillars they seem ; but mere stubble are 
they before the Papal purpose. How weighty and emphatic is 
this, for example! — In 1825 Bishop Doyle appeared before 
Parliament, and, as we believe, with the utmost candor and 
truthfulness gave the following opinion, which is Catholic^ 
indeed, but not at all Romanist: "Our obedience to the law," 
he says, " and the allegiance which we owe to the sovereign, are 
complete and full and perfect and undivided, inasmuch as they 
extend to all political, legal, and civil rights of the king and his 
subjects. I think the allegiance due to the king and the alle- 
giance due to the pope are as distinct and as divided in their 
nature as any two things can possibly be." He was not alone, 
but was backed by the "Declaration," in 1826, we believe, of 
the Vicars Apostolical. Who, after that, could be so ungener- 
ous as to attribute to Rome sinister designs against govern- 
ments ? 

Bishop Kenrick, quoted with approval by Dollinger, says, 
" The obedience which we owe to the Pope has regard only to 
matters in which the salvation of souls is concerned : it has 
nothing to do with the loyalty and allegiance which belong to 
the civil government." 

In his book on the " Primacy " he says, " Primacy is essen- 
tially a spiritual office, wdiich has not, of divine right, any tem- 
poral appendage." " In making Peter the ruler of his kingdom, 
he " [Christ] " did not give him dominion or wealth, or any of 
the appendages of royalty." ^ 

Cardinal Antonelli, the man nearest the Papal throne, whose 
opinions might appear coincident with, if not the echo of, the 

1 R. W. Thompson : Papacy and the State. 



THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 73 

Pope's, said that it was never taught " that it was allowable for 
a pope to interfere with their temporal rights and blessings;" 
and Dollinger, who quotes this, adds, " I do not know what 
could be said more clearly or distinctly." 

The superficial therefore think, and they will keep on think- 
ing, — and they include some of the noblest Catholics, like 
Dollinger and some of our American fellow-citizens, — tha^ 
the Papacy means no danger to nations. 

But all these utterances go for nothing, betoken nothing 
hopeful, except to show — what is almost the only hopeful 
thing in the connection of Catholicism with free governments 
— that Catholics are not all Ro7nanists. Probably two-thirds of 
Catholics are not Romanists : but Rome is Romanist ; and An- 
tonelli's word does not count against the word of the Infallible, 
explaining the true Papal idea. It is but the promise of a child 
of wdiat his father will do. For Pius IX., in the Syllabus (§§ 55, 
77), anathematizes as errors., "That the Church ought to be 
separated from the State, and the State from the Church ; " 
" That in our times it is no longer expedient that the Catholic 
should be the religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other 
religions." And, enveloping the same thought (§ 78), " Whence 
it has been wisely " (this, observe, is stigmatized as an error) 
" provided by law, in some countries called Catholic, that per- 
sons coming to reside therein shall enjoy the public exercise 
of their own worship." "And, in Article 24 of this docu- 
ment, the denial to the Church of authority to avail herself of 
any force, or of any direct or indirect temporal power to extend 
her faith, is similarly denounced."^ "Pope Gregory XVI., in 
his Encyclical Letter of 1832, denounces as ' a most pestilent 
error, as the ravings of delirium, the opinion that for every one 
whatever is to be claimed and defended the liberty of con- 
science.'" "In 1864 Pius IX. issued his Encyclical Letter, in 
which he says ' that liberty of conscience and of worship is the 
right of every man ' is an erroneous opinion, ' most pernicious 
to the Catholic Church and to the salvation of souls.' " 

This is fidelity to the history and traditions of the Papacy, 

^ Lorimer. 



74 THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 

from Hildebrand down ; to the Papacy's idea of itself, that it 
is the only legitimate spiritual power, already in a perfect and 
absolute and infallible form, and the world its own proper natu- 
ral, to be ruled by it ; to the Romanists, who, like the Jesuits, 
understand the "true inwardness " of the Papacy. These either 
deny to government any distinct organic life, or they assert a 
clerocracy, that the State should be subject to the Church, like 
horse to rider. Pere Hyacinthe quotes with highest approval an 
idea of government, which, he says, moulded his own : " The 
Abbe Serbati, a genuine Italian to the very marrow of his bones, 
has helped me to the best conception of civil society. According 
to him, civil society has for its object, not — like the family in 
the natural order, nor like the Church in the supernatural order 
— the substance of rights, but simply the modality of rights. It 
does not create rights." " The mission of the State consists, 
then, in fixing the modality of rights ; that is, in regulating the 
best way in which the reciprocal duties of individuals and fami- 
lies should be exercised in order to help rather than hinder each 
other in their common development," " and to extend over them 
what in England is so beautifully called the ' Queen's Peace.' " 
" Such are the natural frontiers of civil society and domestic 
society."-^ He means, if we understand him, that nationality 
and loyalty are a mistake; that government is merely a police to 
protect the family and the church. 

Yet, only thirty pages farther on. Father Hyacinthe, with 
strange inconsistency, but in noble words of truth, says, " What 
makes a nation is its soul. There is a soul in nations as in 
individuals, and this soul is their life." " This people has a 
common conscience in the present, a common stock of beliefs, 
affections, interests, morals ; and it is in the profound conscious- 
ness of this collective life that it declares its unity to itself 
before declaring it to its rivals. Now, in this national soul, I 
do not hesitate to say the largest and best place belongs to re- 
ligion."^ " If I saw in my country nothing but an institution of 
human contrivance, a sort of social clock-work, whose number- 

^ Discourses : Civil Society and Christianity, 27. 
2 Discourses : Religion in the Life of Nations, 58. 



THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 75 

less little wheels are ticketed off in the bulletin of laws, and set 
in motion by the myriad hands of the bureaucracy ; if I saw in 
it nothing but a patch of common earth occupied by people for- 
eign and sometimes hostile to each other, — how could such a 
France as that waken in my heart one throb of enthusiasm ? " 
" When I was yet a boy, I used to read those noble lines of one 
of our greatest poets: — 

' Ye nations, pompous name for savage hate ! 
Can love be halted at your boundary-lines ? 
Tear down those envious flags, and hear the voice — 
That other voice — that speaks this stern reproach : 
Self-love and hate alone possess a country ; 
But brotherly love has none.' 

* Nations, mot pompeux pour dire barbaric ! 
L'amour s'arrete-t-il o\x s'arretent vos pas ? 
Dechirez ces drapeaux ; une autre voix vous crie : 
L'egoisme et la haine ont seuls une patrie, 
La fraternite n'en a pas.' 

De Lamartine : La Marseillaise de la Paix. 

"These are fine lines ; but they are false." This was spoken 
in December, 1867. But notwithstanding these noble, spontane- 
ous words of patriotism, yet in a volume of his published later, 
but in a discourse spoken a year earlier, he says, " The Nation. 
The second form of society — not natural, but artificial, since it is 
man's own creation — is civil society." "The object of this 
government is, not to suppress or to create individual or family 
rights, but to regulate the manner of exercising all rights ; to 
extend over them the protection of justice, and, if necessary, the 
protection of the sword, against all attack, whether from without 
or from within." ^ It is this same unpatriotic view which he 
promulgates Dec. i, 1867, only two weeks before the noble 
words of patriotism already quoted on " Religion in the Life of 
Nations." Either this view of Pere Hyacinthe, or the subjuga- 
tion of temporal to Papal Church dominion, as horse to its rider, 
is the relation of Church and State in the idea of the Pope. 
" When I say the Pope," as Coleridge says, " I understand the 
Papal hierarchy, which is, in truth, the dilated Fop e.^^ 

* The Family and the Church, 63. 



76 THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 

Geffcken-^ traces this claim of supremacy of Church over State 
farther than to Hildebrand. " ' The emperor,' says Chrysostom, 
' governs the body ; the priest governs the mind : therefore the 
emperor must bow his head under the hand cf the priest' The 
theory is established in detail in Augustine's work on the ' City 
of God,' wherein he contrasts the Church as the Civitas Dei with 
the State as a purely human society {Jiominum midtitudo aliquo 
societatis vinculo coUigatd). The State does not receive its true 
mission and consecration until it has submitted its allegiance 
to the Church. Although, therefore, it continues to receive 
the obedience of the Church in all matters of purely temporal 
concern, on the other hand, whenever it refuses to obey her in 
spiritual matters, it accomplishes its own destruction ; and as 
to what are spiritual matters the Church can alone decide." 

Guizot, as a faithful historian, speaking of the fifth century,^ 
says that " the Church endeavored with all her might to estab- 
lish the principle of theocracy, to usurp temporal authority, to 
obtain universal dominion." "She said, 'What! have I right, 
have I an authority, over that whifch is most elevated, most 
independent in man, — over his thoughts, over his interior will, 
over his conscience, — and have I not a right over his exte- 
rior, his temporal and moral interests ? ' " " The spiritual order 
had a natural tendency to encroach on the State." '' When she 
failed in this, when she found she could not obtain absolute 
power for herself, she did what was almost as bad : to obtain 
a share of it, she leagued herself with temporal rulers, and en- 
forced with all her might their claim to absolute power at the 
expense of the liberty of the subject." 

Now, it is not a little singular that no one, not even Mulford, 
has presented the counter idea of the State with more clearness 
and cogency than some Catholics who were not Romanists ; 
notably Mr. O. A. Brownson, in his work, " The American 
Republic." " Nations," he says, " are only individuals on a 
larger scale. They have a life, an individuality, a reason, a 
conscience, and instincts of their own, and have the same gen- 
eral laws of development and growth, and perhaps of decay, as 

1 Church and State, i. 124. 2 Guizot, i. 55. 



THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 77 

the individual man." " A nation has a spiritual as well as a 
material, a moral as well as a physical, existence, and is sub- 
jected to internal as well as external conditions of health and 
virtue, greatness and grandeur, which it must in some measure 
understand and observe, or become weak and infirm, and 
stunted in its growth, and end in premature decay and death." ^ 
" Every living nation has an idea given it to realize, and whose 
realization is its special work, mission, or destiny. Every nation 
is, in some sense, a chosen people of God." "The Church not 
only distinguishes between the two powers, but recognizes as 
legitimate governments that manifestly do not derive from God 
through her."^ 

This, the Transalpine Catholic idea, is in direct antithesis to 
the Cisalpine and to the Syllabus. 

Now, having taken a view of the two theories, the hierar- 
chical and the national, we can pass to considerations showing 
where the truth lies, that 

THE STATE IS NOT TO BE DOMINATED BY THE CHURCH. 

I. The most obvious consideration, probably, that which 
comes most promptly and irrepressibly to the mind, as to the 
independence of States, is, that States existed before the 
Church, and also quite apart from it. 

This chronological argument can hardly be gainsaid. What 
is a nation but a people, or complexity of peoples, in the provi- 
dence and vocation of God, united by similarity of race, lan- 
guage, by one geographical theatre in which to act, and by one 
government, into one spirit and general oneness of destiny and 
aim? Now, if this is the true idea of the nation, consider that 
two great nations, to speak of no others, preceded any church 
or any priesthood which would be considered legitimate, — Egypt 
and China. These nations still exist ; the latter certainly pos- 
sessing in high degree what we call the spirit of nationality. 
These nations existed before the Church. It seems to have 
pleased God that they should exist as nations. Therefore the 
State can exist, we do not say without God, without righteous- 
ness, but without the Church. 

1 Am. Repub., i, 2. 2 Ibid., 112. 



78 THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 

Israel, too, was a nation before it was a church. 

Other nations, later in time, and contemporary with the 
Church in some form, have existed quite apart from the Church ; 
Greece and Rome, for example. They did not receive their 
task from any ecclesiastical organization : yet historians have 
always regarded them as nationalities^ existing, in the provi- 
dence of God, to carry out certain well-defined purposes. The 
Greek mind gave force in the world to the ideas of freedom in 
the state, and perfection in art. Rome impressed the univer- 
sality and majesty of law, also the beneficence of imperial 
law, as seen in its great roads, great schools, and even in its 
distant provinces, its great walls built against barbarian ene- 
mies of those it had undertaken to protect. These nationali- 
ties, as well defined as ever existed, were apart from any church. 

In modern times, many of the nationalities on the same his- 
toric theatre as the Church formed themselves without her, if 
one might not say, in some cases, in spite of her. Russia did 
not come to its nationality through the fostering of the Church, 
nor England, nor France, nor, in our own day, free Italy. 

We conclude, then, the independence of the State of the 
Church, because, from historical survey, we find the State exist- 
ing in complete nationality before and apart from the Church. 
Some cogent reason will be needed to subject to the Church 
the State, which exists independent of it, and owns no tie to it 
of origin in any respect. Passing, now, to philosophical reasons, 

II. State and Church should be distinct, because 
State and Church have a different basis, — the one being 
an organization of natural men, and viewed as an organism, one 
grand natural man, existing for natural life and natural ends ; 
the other being an organization of spiritual men, and, as it were, 
one grand spiritual man for spiritual life and ends. 

This embraces several propositions : — 

JFirst, Church and State have a different basis. The State is 
built on man as a soul ; the Church, on man as a spirit, — the 
one as attached to nature, the other as detached from it. 

Second^ The State is co7nposed of natural men ; the Churchy of 
spiritual. The State is made up of men as natural, since it 



THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 79 

can take no account of the unseen relations of spirits, which 
are beyond its ken: the Church, the true Church invisible, is 
made up of spiritual men who are in filial accord with the 
Father of spirits, and fraternal accord with renewed spirits. 

Third, They are both organisms as well as organizations. This 
is denied by Serbati, but is the popular idea, — the idea of Mul- 
ford, Brownson, Tocqueville, and scholars generally. So plain 
is it, that some have even sought the origin of government in 
the family relation extended. The two, nationality and family, 
happened to coincide in Israel. Hence Cicero and Washington 
are named Patres Patrice, and Henry IV. called Frenchmen his 
children. These facts are adduced only to show that the nation 
is as naturally thought to be an organism as the family, which, 
all allow, possesses an organic life. This is the view of Aris- 
totle and Hegel. Milton says, " A nation ought to be like 
some huge [Christian] personage, — one mighty growth or 
stature of an honest man, as big and compact in virtue as in 
body." 

Of the two, indeed, the State is more compact as an organism 
than the Church : so erroneous is the idea that the Church alone 
has an organic life, and that the State is a mere organized guard 
to keep it. For while we may start from citizen or state, church- 
member or church, as unit, the reasons are weightiest to call 
the State on the one side, and the church-7nember on the other, 
\h.^ priuiary MViSx. to which all is most naturally referred. One 
spirit is worth more than the church visible ; but for the State 
thousands of citizens sacrifice themselves, all they have in the 
State. In this one particular the nation is like a federal gov- 
ernment, where the interests of the secondary unit, the State, 
are not forgotten, but subordinated to the whole : the Church is 
like a confederation, where each part of the whole holds itself 
supremely important. In each man's spirit, as in an interior 
world, a "kingdom within," religion is enacted. 

Alexandre Vinet, in his work, in most respects superlative,^ 
points out with sharp distinctness the fact that personal religion 
appertains only to the person, and can only be loosely and 

f A 

* Separation de I'Eglise et de I'Etat, 1858. 



8o THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 

generally represented in an organization. He distinguishes 
between conscience (meaning the general moral sense) and the 
particular conscience, " the conscience in the metaphysical sense." 
In this sense " consciences are not identical." Then he pro- 
ceeds : " Christ consecrated the principle of religious individu- 
ality.'^ " A religion which at its departure or its termination 
is not personal is not a religion." " Individuality, religion, — 
these two terms are never separated. A collective religion is not 
a religion.'''' And again this clear and profound thinker says, 
" If Christianity is the religion of the individual, the element of 
identity, which is that of civil society, has forever disappeared 
from the domain of religion, and every kind of contact is 
henceforth impossible between Church and State." From which 
the implied claim — that because the Church is an organism, 
and, as Serbati says, the State is not, therefore the State must 
become corporal's guard to the Church — falls to the ground ; 
since, of the two, the State is not only an organism, but the more 
compact organism of the two. 

Fourth^ The State exists for natural ends ; the Church, for spirit- 
ual. The State cares for natural welfare, " life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness," with conformity to moral law as the 
condition of its health and growth : the Church accomplishes its 
high end in ministering means whereby each spirit may come 
into closer union with the Divine Spirit. The State, in accom- 
plishing its career worthily, has its good for each man in giving 
him freedom, and help in becoming a perfect natural man, in 
education, physical development, and the rest, and in setting 
before him, in hei spirit, history, laws, institutions, great names, 
the spectacle of the highest qualities — honor, justice, and the 
like —which can exist in the natural man : the Church accom- 
plishes its end to each man when v^he becomes to him the 
minister of more perfect life with his God, and exhibits in her 
corporate life the manifold perfections of the spiritual man. 

The State and the Church, then, are two separate organizations 
in different spheres. Nor is there reason why either should domi- 
nate the other. The State cannot dominate the Church, because 
the State knows nothing of the unseen life of each person with 



THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 



God, and has no right to attempt to control it, any more than 
to give laws to the taste for music, or a society of music. When 
such an invisible society takes visible form, and intrudes objec- 
tionable and lawless acts upon society, the State may take 
cognizance of them. 

The Church should not dominate the State, because the 
Church is intent on the spiritual good of each of its members, 
*' righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit;" while the 
State is not aiming at that, but so to maintain the national life 
that each citizen may fulfil all the conditions of a natural man. 
The State is a natural man. The natural man is not bound to 
submit to the spiritual man, unless made to feel that the demand 
is legitimate. A person's soul feels, when quickened, the 
authority of his own spirit, if in righteousness. The State has 
found no other spirit, single or organized, which is its master, 
except God and its own spirit, V esprit de Vet at. Unless the 
Church can prove to the State that it dominates it by right 
divine, as the proper spirit of the State, the State must hold 
itself free from the Church to fulfil its own ends in becoming a 
perfect natural man. The burden of proof is on the Church to 
convince the State, so as to insure its complete suffrage, that it 
ought to submit to the Church's guidance. 

Of course the State, without subjecting herself to the Church, 
can perceive that the Church may aid in ennobling the national 
life, just as Germany might recognize the benefit of her musical 
societies on national character. This is Coleridge's view of the 
connection of Church and State : " The Christian Church is 
not a ki7igdoj?i., realm (royaume), or state {sensii latiort) of the 
world ; " " nor is it an estate of any such realm, kingdom, or 
state." " Her paramount aim and object, indeed, is another 
world, — not a world to come exclusively, but likewise another 
world that now is.'''' " It is the appointed opposite to all " 
kingdoms '"''collectively; the sustaining^ correcting^ befrie7tdi?ig- 
opposite of the world ; the compensating counterforce to tha 
inherent and inevitable evils and defects of the State as a state,, 
and without reference to its better or worse constructions as a 
particular state." In the same way we may recognize the 



82 THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 

benefit received from friends, and their moulding influence 
upon us, without subjecting ourselves, soul and body, to their 
spirits as a subjugating and controlling force. State and Church 
are not Husband and Wife, bnt Brother and Sister. It was a 
most natural utterance of a man who had had forced upon his 
mind all through life, in stormy days, the purpose and true 
place of these two organizations, as they stood out to his mind 
in his final hours, the last words of Cavour, ''''Libera Chiesa in 
libcro Stato,'^ — "A free Church in a free State." 

III. The State has an entirely legitimate life apart 
FROM THE Church, which has no need of subjection to 
the Church to secure its perfection. Undoubtedly Cole- 
ridge is right, that the Church is a " befriending " power to the 
State. But the State has as real and divine a life within her 
sphere as the Church within her sphere. It does by no means 
follow that what comes naturally is of necessity to be super- 
seded by what comes spiritually. This is a capital misappre- 
hension of some. The word " spiritual " seems to throw a spell 
over some as soon as uttered. Is not the planetary system 
perfect, though its motions are not governed by spiritual laws ? 
The most spiritual power could not interfere with its natural 
operations. They are directly from God as the creating Spirit. 
"The earth does not move," said the Church: ^''E pur si muoveT 
" But it moves for all that," said Galileo ; and it moves as 
symmetrically as if the Church moved it. God does not do all 
right things that are done on earth through the Church. Your 
circulatory system is perfect, divinely perfect in its own sphere, 
with its never-ceasing systole and diastole. The respiratory 
system is as normal and right as it can be. The spirit can 
sanctify, but cannot dominate it. For the Church to rule a free 
State is like the spirit attempting to give laws to the circulation 
of the blood, which is as divine as the spirit, as normal as the 
spirit, though inferior to it. The State is as normal as the 
Church. 

IV. The Church should not control the State, because 

THE nobly developed NATURAL MAN MAY BE SUPERIOR TO 

THE DiSTORTEDLY DEVELOPED SPIRITUAL MAN. Examples are 



THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 83 

abundant of a greater nobility of soul in some unspiritual than 
in some spiritual men. It cannot, therefore, be asserted roundly, 
that spiritual must control natural. Satan is a spirit : demo- 
niacal possession of human bodieg is not therefore desirable. 
The natural of a man, left free, may be nobler than dominated 
by his misguided spiritual. Gerhard, in " Cloister and Hearth," 
made the pernicious attempt to subject a noble natural to a 
mistaught spiritual. In Christ, the spiritual duly controlk^d the 
natural, and '" he went about doing good." In Simon Stylites, 
a false spiritual subjugated, doubtless, a worthier natural, and 
he became, against nature, the Column Hermit. His natural 
would have led him, in naturals, to act better than did his per- 
verted spiritual. 

So has it happened in the nation a hundred times, that the 
State, as the natural man, has been far in advance of the eccle- 
siastical body in judging its own true aim and destiny. Bollin- 
ger says that " Hennersey, in the British Parliament, was called 
on to name a single man of any intellectual importance in Italy, 
who, on the question of the Papal States, was on the side of 
the Papal Government; and he could name only one, and that 
one the Jesuit Secchi." Undoubtedly, Italy, in her freed 
national spirit, understood Italy's national future better than the 
Vatican. Even Passaglia and Tosti said, "The Papal States 
must cease altogether, or be completely altered." 

America must be allowed to doubt, whether the Pope, in rec- 
ognizing the Southern Confederacy as a legitimate break-off 
from the nation, understood American unity and nationality as 
well as America. 

These are not the only times in history when the instincts of 
a free nation w^ere nobler than the cramped spirit of ecclesiasti- 
cism. It is doubtful if the Episcopalianism of the Revolution, 
nourished as it was by its connection with the Church of Eng- 
land, would have allowed free America to be born. The free 
instincts of a nation may be wiser than -a narrow ecclesiasticism 
which seeks to control it.^ 

V. Thus far we have spoken as if there were but one 
claimant to be the proper spiritual to that natural, — the State. 



84 THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 

But there are several claimants to be the Church. 
Individuals may see but one church, their own; but the State 
sees at its bar several organizations, founded on supposed re- 
ceptions of divine revelation, — Mormon, Mahometan, Papal, 
Protestant. It is somewhat difficult, not to say impossible, for 
the Statc^ being a natural man, to decide as to spiritual claim- 
ants. If it could decide j if there were but one church in the 
world j if the State felt, as completely as the soul of a man 
feels the authority of his spirit when quickened by the Holy 
Spirit, its right and its sole right to rule it, — then might v/e 
think an ecclesiocracy possible. But there are contending claim- 
ants. Either one of them, the Papal, for example, would say, 
" Better let the State live its natural life, befriended by all the 
so-called churches, than have it subject to any other church, 
— the Mormon or Mahometan." 

VI. If there be one true spiritual body, the true 
spiritual man, yet it is still militant, not triumphant, 
nor, indeed, predominant, not having vindicated, so far as to 
command any thing like universal consent, its claim to be the 
one sole spiritual. The persons in the Church are not, therefore, 
inclusive of all within the State; nor will they probably be till 
the end of time. The two organizatio7is are not co-cxtensive : 
therefore they will proceed better each in its own sphere. 

Any religious colony, indeed, has a right to build a state 
upon a church. This our Puritan fathers essayed to do. They 
had a r/^/^/ to do it. "'To construct a commonwealth out of 
a church,' as Winthrop frankly avowed it, that was the intent 
of the founders of the colony."-^ "No one," says that distin- 
guished legal gentleman, Prof. Joel Parker, "had a right to 
come and set up an opposition, and plead conscience. That 
plea was open to a general demurrer. What of that.'' You 
have no right to bring such a conscience here. I submit, the 
argument is unanswerable." ^ " All I claim is a vindication of 
the legal and moral right of the Puritan fathers to govern their 
own commonwealth" "without being accused of persecution." 

1 Rev. George E. Ellis: Lowell Lectures: Massachusetts and its Early History. 

2 Lowell Lectures, 419. 



THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 85 

Such a State must, therefore, to maintain its integrity on its 
original basis, banish summarily and at once all not submis- 
sive to the Church. 

This might be done ; and a Romish, a Mormon colony have 
right to take possession of unoccupied territory, and establish 
a church-state, exclude and banish dissenters. With due 
regard to the growth and ties cf family and society, however, 
this is exceedingly difficult to do ; so that, legally right and 
politically necessary as such banishment might be, in a state 
having such an origin the expedie?icy of continuing a church- 
state would be doubtful in the extreme. The same lectures 
therefore say, " They could not create a state out of a church ; 
for a state grew up which would not come into the church, and 
which they would not have allowed to come into it." 

From all which we observe, that it is almost impossible that 
the Church, or any one church, should completely overlap the 
State, so as, justly to the rights of the dissenters, to control it. 
Beyond all question, a new chicrch entering an old state not of 
its forming has no right to control that state in the presence 
cf dissent. 

VII. The Church should not control the State, 

BECAUSE WE FIND NO DIVINE WARRANT, NOR ANY THING 
WHICH MAY FAIRLY BE CONSIDERED A DIVINE WARRANT, FOK 

IT. " Render to Caesar the things which are Ccesar's, and to 
God the things which are God's." Let us examine particularly. 
I. God docs not., in nature., impress on the conscience that the 
nation is to be subject to a hierarchy. Cavour cannot be 
regarded by the* natural conscience as committing a mortal sin 
because he made a free nation of Italy. The considerations 
thus far presented may give us the reasons why, to the Infinite 
Mind, it does not appear to have seemed wise to subject, 
everywhere and in all time, the temporal to the spiritual 
power. He has put no such law on the tablets of the heart. 
Since nationality was to be a fact everywhere outside of his 
revelation, previous to his revelation, in countries where his 
revelation was — as where is it not ? — imperfectly understood 
and represented, it appears to have seemed best to him that the 



86 THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 

morality of the State, since there must be a morality of the 
State, should repose directly upon himself by a?id iri nature. 

2. In that book from which the claim of the Papal Church is 
supposed to come, God is represented as recognizing., as legitimate, 
governments which do not derive from any spiritual power (nor 
obey any), but only directly, in nature, from himself. To Ish- 
mael it was promised that he should become a nation. The 
image with golden head shows God's thought of nationalities. 
God honored and used Cyrus. " Honor the king." " Be subject 
to principalities." "The powers that be are ordained of God." 
One quotation is sufficient to show that each nation, though 
Israel is the "first-born," is yet as his son. Jer. xviii. 7, 8: 
" At what instant I shall speak against a nation, and concern- 
ing a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it ; 
if that nation against whom I have pronounced turn from their 
evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them." 

3. God in the theocracy is not represented as assiwiing or 
demanding particular control over Israel, but as asking and 
receiving it at the hands of the nation, as something which it 
was theirs to give. E. C. Wines (" Hebrew Commonwealth ") 
has made this very plain : " It ought never to be forgotten, 
that although God, by what he wrought for the Israelites, had 
acquired all the right to be their sovereign that any man could 
possibly possess, he still has neither claimed nor exercised that 
light in an arbitrary and despotic way. Moses, by his direc- 
tion, permitted the people freely to choose whether they would 
accept Jehovah as their King, and obey the laws w|iich he might 
give them. When they had formally assented to this, God was 
considered their King, but not before. The whole world, indeed, 
was under his moral rule. His dominion as Creator embraced 
all the tribes of the earth ; but Israel was his peculiar people, 
who had chosen him for their King. The passages of Scripture 
to this effect are surprisingly pointed and striking (Deut. vi. 
20-24)." 

Furthermore, accepted as the nation's King by the plebiscite 
at Sinai, whom made he his vicegerents ? Moses, not Aaron ; 
Joshua, not Eleazar. .He did not govern the nation through the 



THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 87 

sacerdotal order : that class he kept in their sphere to minis- 
ter in spiritual things. ^' fudges" not priests, he made hii 
vicegerents. Theocracy — we need to recall the word's mean- 
ing — signifies government of a nation by God as King. The- 
ocracy is not clerocracy : it never was clerocracy or ecclesi- 
ocracy in Israel. As a general fact, it may be said, that, in 
Israel, the priestly order never for a day had legitimate control over 
the nation. 

Aaron, indeed, while Moses was on Sinai, was irregularly 
made for the hour a leader " to return to Egypt ; " and Jehoiada 
(2 Kings xi.), alarmed at Athaliah's conspiracy, became leader 
of the loyal host ; but the next chapter shows that he made 
himself duly subject to the king. The Maccabees were priest- 
heroe-s ; leaders because heroes, not because priests. 

4. There is one figure i?t this book, which, to most churches on 
American soil, is the fountain of authority, who is said to stand 
on earth as in some sense or other " God with us." Observe 
his conduct and principles in the matter. 

First, Christ, in his lifetime, absolutely refused to dominate 
over one kingdom which he was importuned to take, which he 
might have taken and controlled ; and in the Temptation he 
also refused the temporal and political external control of all 
the nations of the earth. 

SecoJid, Christ nowhere assumes temporal control over kings 
and governments as such, or gives us to understand that he ever 
will. "My kingdom is not of this world;" that is, in its nature 
is not, and therefore never will be, of this world. Kings are 
nowhere sketched or prophesied as temporal vassals of Jesus. 

Third, A fortiori, Christ never put into the hands of a spirit- 
ual inferior to himself the desire or the prerogative to control 
temporal kingdoms, nor into the hands of any organization. 

VIII. The State and the Church should be kept asun- 
der BECAUSE each OF THEM COMES TO ITS HIGHEST LIFE WHEN 
unimpeded by BINDING CONNECTION WITH THE OTHER. 

That they may be helpful to each other is not denied. 
The State may keep churches from outward encroachments 
on each other. The Church, encouraging all virtue, strengthens 



THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 



good government. What is now asserted is, that Church and 
State are each in highest perfection when not fettered by a 
connection which outwardly binds them together. State and 
Church, we repeat, are brother and sister, not husband and 

WIFE. 

I7i the first place^ the State reaches its highest perfection with- 
out the domination of the Church. (This is quite different from 
saying that the State reaches its highest perfection without God^ 

We could discuss this proposition in the a priori method. We 
prefer simply to point to Greece, to the Athenian republic, to 
Rome, to the kingdom of Alfred, to the republic of America. 
Put these in comparison with Italy, Spain, Austria, in a word, 
any State impeded by connection with the Church, and we be- 
come aware that a State free to develop its own life according 
to the national vocation, and aided only by the good influence 
of the Church, is in the way to most perfect flowering and fruit- 
age. Every ecclesiastic would acknowledge this in regard to 
any other church but his own, that the State would fulfil its own 
career most worthily unimpeded by ecclesiastical domination. 

On the other hand, the Church reaches its highest perfection 
without the domination or compulsive help in her affairs of the 
State. Some will even think that the Church has reached its 
highest, purest life when the State has persecuted it, as the 
primitive Christians and the Pilgrims. But, at most, all which 
the Church needs from the State is protection, " the queen's 
peace;" then whatever vitality it has will appear, not by favor 
of the king, but, Dei Gratia, by the life of God in the Church. 

We might argue this also from the nature of religion and the 
methods of its true growth ; but we prefer to bring two witnesses 
as sufficient evidence on a point which should not be a difficult 
one to any reflecting man. 

We remember, however, as we write, that some of England's 
best brains cannot understand how the English Church could 
flourish without the State. But they are like boys who have 
always swum with the help of bladders, who cannot conceive 
how Byron could possibly swim the Hellespont without them. 

We adduce two witnesses. 



THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 89 

Gibbon^ speaking of the effect of Constantine's accession, 
points out that it was the occasion of bringing into the Church 
those who could add nothing but worldliness to weaken its 
spirituaHty. " The hopes of wealth and honors," he says 
(chap. XX.), " the example of an emperor, his exhortations, his 
irresistible smiles, diffused conviction among the venal and 
obsequious crowds which usually fill the apartments of a palace."' 
'' I'he salvation of the common people was purchased at an easy 
rate, if it be true, that, in one year, twelve thousand men were 
baptized at Rome, besides a proportionable number of women 
and children, and that a white garment with twenty pieces of 
gold had been promised by the emperor to every convert." 

Gibbon, who cannot sneer at the Church of the Catacombs, 
finds it natural to think that the Church of Constantine might 
be a less spiritual body, and so less impressive, less true to its 
vocation. 

The other witness is Lyman Beecher. He was one of hun- 
dreds of the greatest and best men who looked with dismay, 
almost as if in thought of the final dissolution of society, at 
the threatening separation of Church and State. Viewing his 
alarm, we confess we have more sympathy for the alarm of our 
English friends at thought of the rupture of the Establishment. 

Beecher struggled with all his might against withdrawing 
from the Church the support of the State. During that 
struggle, his daughter Caroline says, " I remember seeing father, 
the day after the election, sitting on one of the old-fashioned, 
rush-bottomed kitchen-chairs, his head drooping on his breast, 
and his arms hanging down. ' Father,' said I, ' what are you 
thinking of ? ' He answered solemnly, ' The Church of 
God.'" 

Beecher replied to her, " It was a time of great depression 
and suffering." "I worked as hard as mortal man could." 
" My health and spirits began to fail. It was as dark a day as 
I ever saw." " The injury done to the cause of Christ, as we 
then supposed, was irreparable. For several days I suffered 
what no tongue can tell for the best thing that ever happened to 
the State of Connecticut. It cut the churches from dependence 



90 THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 

on State support ; it threw them wholly on their own resources 
and on God. They say ministers have lost their influence : the 
fact is, they have gained." ■'• 

IX. Finally, the State and the Church should be 

KEPT separate, BECAUSE, IN PRACTICE, THEY DO NOT WORK 

well TOGETHER. A fcw facts Only from the many pages of his- 
tory. 

The State should not rule the Church. The State ruling the 
Church drove the Christians into the Roman catacombs* for 
three centuries ; threw Polycarp and a thousand others to the 
lions in the are^a; and persecuted so severely, that Diocletian 
inscribed on a pillar, '''' No77ti7ie Christianoruin de/eto" — "The 
very name of Christian effaced from the earth." ^ 

The Church should not rule the State. The Church rulmg 
the State lost the skilled brain and hand of the Huguenots to 
France ; erected the Inquisition, which, in the eighteen years of 
Torquemada, burnt alive 10,220, besides severely punishing 104,- 
181; and according to the report of Llorente, secretary of the 
Inquisition, " immolated on its scaffolds in the space of three 
centuries upwards of 300,000 persons." 

Church and State do not work well iogdher. 

Several remarks are needed to complete the discussion. 

(i.) "The State and the Church." This is as legitimate a 
collocation of word* as the more frequent " Church and State." 
We are not speaking of the value of the two organizations, but 
of their legitimacy. In that view, it is as proper to start with 
the State as with the Church. Men sometimes say Church and 
State as they say church and parish ; the parish second, because 
secondary, the secular of the church. This is the view of men 
like Serbati and Hyacinthe, who live only in the Church, and 
see the Church as the only reality. They ask this question, 
" What is this thing, the State 1 what is it for ? " They are 
puzzled. They can only answer, " It must be subordinate to the 
Church, or else a mere protection to Church and family." This 
view ignores nationality as a prime fact. 

But a statesman is just as philosophical in saying the State is 

1 Lyman Beecher, Autobiography, i. 344. 2 Neander, Ch. Hist. i. 154. 



THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 91 

the starting-point. This is the view of Mulford in the volume, 
"The Nation;" and of Milton, "The nation is one huge honest 
man." Then come the questions, "What relation has the 
Church, if any, to the State V "What relation has religion, apart 
from the Church, to the State V It is as legitimate to say State 
and Church, as well as Church and State, as to speak of music 
and poetry, as well as of poetry and music. 

(11.) This discussion sheds great light on what is meant by 
religion as properly belonging to the State. Much blind thought 
there is, which strives to utter, in a confused way, that some sort 
of religion appertains to the State. This is constantly said by 
some of the great Anglicans. The confusion is in the use of 
religion in two senses, — one narrow, the other wide ; the one 
natural, the other spiritual religion. In the argument, "reli- 
gion " is an equivoque^ and the mind unv/ittingly plays back- 
wards and forwards between its two meanings : hence confu- 
sion. The State is a natural man, and ought to have natural 
religion^ " what is everywhere and always religion." The State 
cannot have spiritual religion ; nor can it meddle with it in 
individuals. Much of the confusion of thought in defenders of 
the Established Church would be cleared up, if they should see 
that natural religion^ the recognition of God in government, 
education, society, morality, is competent to, obligatory upon, 
the State, as one huge natural man, but that spiritual and 
revealed religion is entirely a matter between each soul and 
God, and therefore in no way to be intruded upon by the State. 
That personal revelation of God to the soul the State has no 
right to pry into, or seek to understand, much less to formulate, 
establish, promulgate, and constrain and compel the unwilling 
to j)rofess to experience. A creed is, in reality, not an intellect- 
ual dogma, but a description of God as he deals with a soul. In 
old New-England times, each candidate for the church wrote 
out his own creed. Not even a church can constrain a man 
to a creed : it can only declare how far his religious experience 
entitles him to fellowship. The more one studies spiritual re- 
ligion as a revelation of God in the soul, the more will he feel 
that the State has no right to touch personal religion, much less 
to teach it, much less to attempt to compel it. 



92 THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 

(ill.) The separation of Church and State does 7iot 77iean the exclu- 
sioJi of God, righteousness, morality, from the State. This mis- 
apprehension seems so common as to be almost universal. 
Brownson's words deserve careful study : " They have not only 
separated the State from the Church as an external corporation, but 
from God as its i7iterjial lawgiver, a7id by so doing have deprived 
the State of her sacred7iess, i7iviolability, a7id hold 07i the co7iscience.''^ 
This mistake should not be made by thoughtful men. 

(iv.) The principles of this discussion not only permit, they 
really exact, that the State, though not intermeddling with 
Church, or with the private interviews of the King of kings with 
individuals, should entertain the highest ideas of God and right- 
eousness, and the highest ideal of humanity, as the ideal of its 
own life. This is competent to the State within its proper 
sphere. It is not contrary, but according, to these principles, 
that all orders of citizens, from the chief magistrate to the hum- 
blest voter, should fulfil their duties to the State under the pro- 
foundest sense of their responsibility to God to accomplish the 
divine order in all things — magistracy, franchise, education — 
which pertain to the State. On the other hand, it is competent 
to the State to set before it as the model of its own life the 
highest human life of man. If, for example, the ideas of the 
Jews should change, there is nothing in these principles to pre- 
vent the State entire from accepting the character of Jesus 
Christ, in the fulness of his reverence, the clearness of his sense 
of true living, and the amplitude of his beneficence, as the ideal 
of the State. We are, of course, speaking of Christ entirely 
apart from his spiritual doctrines and the work he is averred by 
theologians to do between the soul and God. Were there no 
objection on the part of a few who will, in a day not far distant, 
give him fairer study than to-day, there would be nothing incon- 
gruous for the entire State, as a natural man, to set Thorwald- 
sen's Christus Seg7ic7id on our national capitol as the ideal of our 
national life. Until that time, it is entirely competent, without 
departing from these principles, to a statesman like Sumner, to 
have the deepest sense of God and righteousness in the State, 
and a constant endeavor — as in his ideas on peace — to form 



THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 93 

the nation according to the model of the human character of 
Christ as the Divine Man.-^ 

This is the idea which shines dimly, as through a mist, before 
some^ when they assert that the nation is a Christian nation. 
That expression, so confusing as to make its use objectionable 
or impossible, might be true in the sense above indicated, — 
that the nation, in the general and prevailing thought, recognizes 
the benevolence and philanthropy, the love of peace, the severe 
righteousness, the mercy to poor, sick, afflicted, which are, or 
are popularly believed to be, in Jesus, as the highest ideal of 
humanity, and so the ideal which the State, consciously or un- 
consciously, is striving to realize in itself, rather than the man- 
hood of Achilles, or Alexander, or Louis XIV., or Napoleon. 
In this sense, we might call ourselves a Christian nation ; but 
the expression is so equivocal, that its use is hazardous, and, 
for the present, undesirable. 

(v.) State and Church should resist any attempt at a binding 
alliance : they should either of them resist it as brother and 
sister would resist the idea of marriage. There are many who 
are ready with arguments to show the use and beauty of State 
and Church. Specious arguments might be found even for the 
marriage of brother and sister. That is primitive, since Cain 
and Seth must have married sisters ; brother and sister have 
had longest acquaintance ; they would keep the property to- 
gether ; they might hand down family qualities intensified ; and, 
perhaps it might be added by way of pleasantry, they would 
have no mother-in-law. Still we would not seriously advise 
marriage of brother and sister. Arguments for union of State 
and Church are, like the above, surface arguments, not bottom 
arguments, from the nature of things. 

Binding alliance is such a union that either interferes in the 
concerns of the other. Brother and sister have wide privilege 
of advice and help, but no compulsion. Husband and wife have 
certain moral and legal compulsions. State and Church should 
not be so united, for example, that the Church shall allow the 
State to choose and locate her pastors, while the State agrees 
to maintain them. 

* Charles Sumner: True Grandeur of Nationst 



94 THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 

This is an establishment, or established religion, which, as 
Parkinson defines it in his admirable book, " is an ecclesiastical 
organization whose teachings are authorized, and whose ^ sup- 
port is provided by the State." " Any church whose ministers 
are maintained from the appropriation of a certain portion of 
the land of the country which would neither have been possible 
in origin nor in permanence, except by the force of public law, 
is an established church. Any church whose articles and ser- 
vices have received the legal sanction, and could not be changed 
without the further sanction of acts of Parliament, is an estab- 
lished church. In the Church of England these two conditions 
meet, and constitute her the more distinctly an establishment."^ 

The English reader will, perhaps, desire to see the principles 
of this paper applied to the living problem of his country, — 
establishment, or disestablishment. 

So much that is excellent and venerable, and fruitful of good, 
— the cathedrals, the English Bible, — has sprung from united 
State and Church in England, that one must use resolution in , 
penetrating the subject, willing to accept what insight shows, — 
that, with all the apparent advantages from the marriage. State 
and Church have been detained by it from higher good. 

Israel and England show the two most auspicious experiments 
of the connection of State and Church. They are worthy of 
special study. 

First.^ State and Church iit Israel. 

Passages might be collected from the records in Kings and 
Chronicles which would make an argument of fair show for the 
use of the secular arm in promoting worship. Such passages 
are the frequent use of power by pious kings in cutting down 
Baal's groves, and the temple-building by Solomon. But, on the 
other side, observe : — 

(i.) Israel is an exceptional case : Israel was called to a partic- 
ular destiny. God gave to Greece, to Rome, ideas to develop. 
Through the nationality of Israel during long centuries, God 
proposed as in solid type to set forth the monotheistic idea, the 
ritual and Messiah, the written oracles, and the history of Israel, 

1 Parkinson, Rev. H, W : State Churches. 



THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 95 



itself a tapestry inwoven witli God's dealings with his people. 
At Sinai God called the nation to his work and worship. The}'' 
accepted it by acclamation. Israel became a theocracy, in 
which idolatry was treason. Israel was to exist to receive the 
religious ideas. 

The provisions were complete. God himself ordained the 
Church, the ritual, and the worship, even to the minutest 
arrangements. To the State was left nothing to do in the 
organizing of the Church or the worship. All was done by 
Jehovah. To the State was left only the preservation of the 
Church, and the holding of citizens to external duties. For that 
purpose God made arrangements for a succession of divinely 
chosen men, with heart and wisdom to keep Israel to its mis- 
sion. Church and State were organized divinely, separately, 
and establislied by God himself in relations to each other, as 
are earth and moon. The State never interfered with the Church 
in her internal affairs ; nor does the record impress us that the 
State, except in the destruction of idolatry and the keeping of 
the Sabbath, used compulsion at all liberally. 

Moreover, their politics and their religion had the same proof, 
obvious and irresistible. The pillar of cloud that led Israel 
rested over the tabernacle of his worship. He who established 
the ritual, and gave their Messiah in prospect, was he who re- 
vealed himself unmistakably in their history. There could be 
no doubt of that. The same God who chose Moses chose Aaron. 
We can hardly imagine a Jew denying that. 

Now, this is altogether peculiar. 

No other nation will probably ever have a distinctively re- 
ligious destiny. " To them were given the oracles of God." No 
nation will ever have God distinctly and unmistakably ordain, 
co-ordinately and " complanted," its State and Church. No 
nation will again have a church with ritual and worship divinely 
arranged in its most trifling particulars, even to the "jots and 
tittles " of the law. No nation will ever again have a divinely 
chosen and guided chief magistracy. Therefore no State with- 
out these important conditions can claim Israel as a proper 
model in State and Church. 



g6 THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 

By those conditions, the same divinity unmistakably ordain- 
ing Church and State and their connection, State and Church 
might have been a success. 

But now we have to observe a disturbing element. 

(2.) Israel rejected the succession of ^/2^/;z^/y called magistrates. 
They sought a king. God, under protest, yielded to their folly. 
One great means of the success of the State Church was knocked 
away. The succession of hereditary kings, with such various 
characters as Saul and David, Josiah and Ahab, was not calcu- 
lated to fulfil Israel's mission. 

This new governmental arrangement was not, however, wholly 
fatal. It could not change the idea of Israel's mission, which 
God did not relinquish, but kept alive in the faithful "remnant." 
It could not destroy the record and memory of the divinely 
established worship, nor divert the people entirely from it. It 
could not prevent the powerful prophetic office and work. But, 
for all this, the failure of one link in the divine chain, the sub- 
stitution of hereditary monarchy, with fluctuations of religious 
purpose, in place of a series of divinely chosen judges, — 
Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Deborah, Samuel, — so vitiated the 
plan of State sustaining Church, that, 

(3.) Taking the whole history of Israel together, no one would 
probably say that religion prospered in that nation through the 
force of the government behind it. The building of the Temple 
seems the most signal advantage to Israel of the secular power ; 
yet it may be questioned whether David more readily accumu- 
lated the wealth for the Temple than Moses for the Tabernacle. 
Th^e the free-will offerings were so great, that Moses was 
obliged to stay them. 

To speak of no other injuries received from the State, the 
work of one single king, Jeroboam, is sufficient to condemn the 
experiment of binding Church to State. By making the two 
calves at Dan and Beersheba, " he made Israel to sin ; " he cut 
off ten tribes permanently from the Temple worship ; he propa- 
gated his wicked example ; he sundered them, through the 
retributions of God, from their native land, among heathen 
idolaters j he left the nation in a broken condition politically 



THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 97 

and religiously, more ready to misunderstand the Messiah, and 
receive the condemnation of his rejection. 

All this occurred from the failure of one only of the peculiar 
conditions by which God would have made a State Church 
successful. 

In modern days, all these conditions fail ; and we are not 
surprised that the clear insight of Benedict Spinoza — a Jew, 
and not ignorant of the philosophy of his nation's institutions — 
led him to advocate the theory of the separation of Church and 
State.^ Paradoxical as it would seem, he was an Israelite 
indeed in so doing. 

The State Church of Engla7id deserves study. We advance to 
examine it, if not with veneration, at least with respect, and 
with consideration of the feelings attached to a time-honored 
State-Church, yet with fearlessness, as those who see it as an 
incongruous and mischievous union. 

" Numerous associations connect themselves with the idea of 
the Established Church. It has interwoven itself with many 
national habits and customs. Some of its endowments have 
come down from an immemorial age. Its fabrics are multi- 
plied in every town, and lift their spires in every village. Its 
prayers have been the language of devotion to multitudes for 
ten generations. Twenty thousand clergy derive from it com- 
fortable and sometimes splendid maintenance, and superior 
social position. No wonder the Established Church has its 
defenders."^ 

George Herbert's feelings express themselves fervently : — 

" I joy, dear mother, when I view 
Thy perfect lineaments, and hue 
Both sweet and bright." 

Poems : The British Church. 

But ivies of fond associations grow over rough sheds, and 
ruins, and unmatched architecture, as well as over symmetrically 
united adjacent palaces. The English Church has for genera- 
tions been the object of fond regard. Yet perhaps the Eng- 

^ GefEcken : Church and State, i. 458. 2 Parkinson, 284, 



98 THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 



lishman is not discriminating as to how much of his affectior 
clings to the Church as a Churchy and how httle, perchance, 
to the Churcli as an Establish7nent. When we think of all 
which might be meant by the English Churchy — the Christian 
activity and hving of more than a millennium of years ; the 
Christian men before and since Alfred ; such men as Wycliife 
and Tyndale and Baxter and Bunyan and Robertson ; such 
women as Hannah More, Elizabeth Fry, and Florence Nightin- 
gale ; such missionaries as Carey, Marshman, Ward, Martyn, and 
Duff, pushing the gospel to remotest lands ; such evangelists as 
Wesley and Whitefield ; such writers as Bunyan and others, who 
have created the finest Christian literature in the world, forever 
to be read with delight and profit ; when we think of her English 
Bible ; her hymnology, rich with the spiritual songs of Watts, 
Charles Wesley, and Cowper ; when we reflect, even in this most 
cursory way, upon the vast aggregate of England's Christian 
life and history and achievements, without as well as within the 
Establishment, — we own that we think the English Church, in 
its broadest sense, is deserving of many fold more veneration 
than the Establishment alone, however venerable that may seem 
to be. The English Church, in this broader sense, is large 
enough to receive all the ivies of affectionate veneration which 
have been lavished upon that part of the Church called the 
National Church. Keble and Herbert and Vaughan need not 
rewrite their fond tributes of verse to the British Church ; but 
these poems can receive a wider meaning. Were we English- 
men, we would not wish to hear of an English Church which 
did not include Bunyan, and Robert Hall, and Spurgeon, and 
Baxter, and Wesley, and Cowper, and a firmament of other 
sainted names. Indeed, we change our thought ; and should 
we, as we advance, through compliance with custom, chance to 
use the title " English Church " of the Establishment alone, we 
crave pardon of the broadest-minded Englishmen, who want an 
English Church which means all England'' s Christianity. 

One is struck, in reading the arguments for an Establishment by 
great men like Arnold, Stanley, and the authors of the " Essays." ■" 

^ Hole, Dixon, Lloyd: see Parkinson's Preface. 



THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 99 

by observing that they seem perfunctory, as if made up by 
advocates to defend an established institution without regard to 
the deep principles involved. In no other way can we account 
for the feeble arguments, and for the strong objections which 
they state, but do not remove. We suspect that our English 
churchmen are more governed in their clinging to the Establish- 
ment by their feelings, and by a sense of the convenience of 
having force of law and wealth and respectability behind the 
Church, than by any well-grounded theory that State and' 
Church ought to be united. Born in Boston, Thomas Arnold 
would never have written his " Fragment on the Church." 

Arnold's argument is thus stated by Stanley : " His belief that 
the object of the State and the Church was alike the highest 
welfare of man ; and that — as the State could not accomplish 
this, unless it acted with the wisdom and goodness of the 
Church, nor the Church, unless it was invested with the sov- 
ereign power of the State — the State and the Church in their 
ideal form were not two societies, but one ; and that it is only in 
proportion as this identity is realized in each particular country 
that man's perfection and God's glory can be established on 
earth." 

This is noble and plausible, but, with due reverence to the 
great teacher of Rugby, fallacious. True is it, that a country 
is blessed by a State and a Church : so God gives both, but not 
one through the other. 

Arnold seems to confuse natural religion, which may be the 
national religion, with spiritual religion, with which the State 
has no more to do than to teach Handel how to write " The 
Messiah." 

Moreover, God does not set before us on earth in all things 
the highest conceivable ideal. It is the highest possible ideal 
of human beings to be Isaftgeloi, " angel-like;" but on earth the 
secondary and temporary ideal is, that they are perfect in mar- 
riage. Poetry and music are perfect, perhaps, only as com- 
plemented by the other ; every poem with its music, all music 
mated with words. But a secondary ideal, under the imperfec- 
tions of human nature, probably forever in this stage of exist- 



loo THE STATE AND THE CHURCH 

ence, makes us call Homer's " Iliad " perfect, and the " Anvil 
Chorus," or Weber's " Storm." So, though in a celestial com- 
monwealth, — where all beings have angelic cognizance, dis- 
crimination, justice, — the State might rule the Church ; but the 
secondary ideal, the only one compatible with earthly limitations, 
is, that State and Church shall each, like poetry and music, per- 
fect itself, and ennoble man, without interference from the other. 

Arnold, Chalmers, and Stanley advance the argument, that 
,a State's power and patronage enable it to set pastors and 
churches in the extremest hamlets. 

We need reply only three words, — Methodism^ American Home 
Missionary Society, Jesuit Missioiis. It is rather the organiza- 
tion and energy of a church which makes it secure places of 
worship in poorest and remotest villages. 

These are the best reasons we have been able to find in such 
English works as we have seen. Some of the arguments ad- 
duced are almost frivolous. 

Against the Establishment, the two finest arguments (and to 
our mind they are both superb and unanswerable) are the vol- 
ume by Rev, Henry William Parkinson, " State Churches," and 
the paper by the Hon. J. L. Curry, LL.D., of Richmond, Va., 
read in 1873 before the Evangelical Alliance in New York, on 
the " Alliance of Church and State." 

Another fine book is Baldwin Brown's " First Principles of 
Ecclesiastical Truth." 

The argument we are about to construct, different in method, 
will freely use their materials, 

(i.) An Establishment is instituted on a wrong principle., and 
confusion of ideas. The State can, indeed, establish natural 
religion, the invocation of God in government and school ; but 
for the State to establish a Church is for the State to interfere 
with the private visits and arrangements of the King of kings. 
Curry well says, "When Church and State are united, the State 
practically assumes infallibility, arrogates the capability and the 
right to sit in judgment upon creeds, and to determine what is 
a church, what is the Church; what is true and what is false 
religion." 



THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. loi 



" Religion, man's relation to his God, is personal and indi- 
vidual, and cannot be vicarious nor compulsory. In the econ- 
omy of God's grace, a national religion, strictly speaking, is a 
solecism and absurdity. The Holy Spirit regenerates by units." 
" State policy may establish a creed, and enforce its outward 
observance by penalties ; but the mind, the heart, and the con- 
science cannot be fettered. Christ's kingdom is not of this 
world j and he is the supreme, absolute, single Head. No tem- 
poral prince can be," " His kingdom is independent of civil 
authority. Over his subjects no earthly potentate has spiritual 
jurisdiction. For a State, by executive or legislative power, to 
give law to Christian churches, to prescribe creed or ministry, 
to determine the guests, and the manner of their gathering at 
the Lord's Table, is a more flagrant usurpation of sovereignty 
than for one of the Azores to assume to govern the world." ^ 

Parkinson keenly says, " The teaching of Christ and his 
apostles must surely be of supreme significance in the decision 
as to what ought to be the relation of the Church to the world." ^ 
"It only remains to refer for a moment to the saying of Christ 
before Pilate, — ' My kingdom is not of this world : if my king- 
dom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I 
should not be delivered to the Jews : but now is my kingdom 
not from hence,' — a saying which puts the advocates of Estab- 
lishments more on their defence than any other. It has been 
generally acknowledged by expositors who had no purpose to 
serve, that Christ's meaning is, that now, from henceforth, his 
kingdom was not to be national, united with the civil power, 
and employing the secular arm, as it had been among the Jews, 
but spiritual, employing only such instrumentalities as affect 
principle and motive; in proof of which his servants did not 
fight." 

" And those who read their New Testaments," says Baldwin 
Brown, " see a picture of the Church there, to which the worldly, 
wealthy, creed-bound, disjointed system of the Establishment 
presents a sorrowful contrast. This apparatus of worldly pomp 
and dignity seems to them a terrible incubus on the spiritual 

* Curry. * P. 24. 



I02 THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 

energy of the Church itself, and a scandal and a shame before 
the unbelieving world. Men are shrewd eno'ugh to see in these 
days that the Established Church hinders much and mars much 
free, voluntary effort which would else be put forth for the ser- 
vice of the community ; and the life, energy, and rapid increase 
of the free churches set men thinking about the right and the 
worth of this costly and clumsy method of attempting — -we can 
hardly say accomplishing — spiritual work." ^ 

That a State should establish a Church is, from the State's 
standpoint, like a fire-company instituting music as one of their 
regular exercises, and that, too, when one-third have no ear for 
music. 

(2.) An Establishment is unjust. 

It is unjust to make half a country pay for worship which they 
do not attend nor approve. 

"From among several denominations government selects one 
to receive its discriminating favor. It takes this denomination 
into partnership, patronizes it, supports it by special laws, 
public property, exclusive privileges." " The government thus 
places nearer the sovereign power the man or the woman who 
professes a particular creed. Such a one becomes a member of 
a privileged fraternity, and, by a sovereign digito monstrari^ is 
held up as a more proper person than his less-favored fellow." 
" Government elects a portion of its citizens, sqmetimes the 
majority, and subjects them to inferiority; dishonors them and 
their religion ; puts a penalty on their form of worship ; degrades 
them at the bar, in the college, in the pulpit, in parliament, and in 
all places of honor and trust. Dissenter is a term of reproach; 
and such a person is under a stigma, and in a state of uniform 
degradation. This vexatious, prolonged, corroding insult is not 
relieved by acts of toleration." " It makes a diploma of a col- 
lege, a commission in the army or navy, a foreign mission, a 
crown, dependent on being loyal to the sect which happens, for 
the nonce, to be in favor with the government. It compels 
support of a denomination which has not the approval of the 
tax-payers. It robs of property; for, when a government take=i 

^ 324. 



THE STATE AND THE CHURCH 103 

more than is necessary for a just and economical administration 
of its legitimate affairs, it commits robbery." ^ 

" The State Church is an offender against the equal rights of 
all men by the law ; and these theories are accomplices after 
the f act. "^ 

(3.) A nation which has a State Church is always the scene of 
tyrannies and of struggles against tyranny. 

The English Church is no exception to this statement. 

The course of this Church has been like an asymptote, com- 
mencing far away, always approaching, but never, to reach, the 
line of justice. No Englishmen, we suppose, would glory in 
the State Church under the Tudors or the Stuarts. Even Ed- 
ward VI. has his reign stained by the burning of Jane Bocher: 
one such act is sufficient to disgrace a reign. 

"There are three degrees of injustice," says Parkinson, "com- 
mitted by an Established Church upon a community. The first 
and greatest is when it proceeds to penal infliction ; the second, 
when it imposes civil disabilities ; the third, when it bestows 
invidious privilege." 

All these have marked the English Church. 

The first of these " is to invade the prerogative of the 
Almighty; to kill the body for what, in a fallible judgment, are 
supposed to be the faults of the soul." 

The State Church, under one name or other, burnt Cranmer, 
Latimer, Ridley, Hooper, Ferrar, and Rogers ; beheaded Fisher 
and Sir Thomas More ; drove nearly nine thousand Catholics 
from their benefices on the accession of Elizabeth ; imprisoned 
Bunyan in Bedford jail ; set on the statute-book the Persecuting 
Acts, Conventicle Acts, Five-mile Acts, Test Acts. These are 
specimens of State-church tyranny. 

"The revolution of 1688 turned over that page of English 
history." This revolution gave the Toleration Act. 

" From the time of the Toleration Act the work of removing 
the disabilities under which the Nonconformists labored has 
been steadily pursued." " Perhaps its most striking events 
were Catholic emancipation, the admission of Jews into Parlia- 

1 Curry. Parkinson, 163. 



I04 THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 

ment, the abolition of church-rates, and the opening of the uni- 
versities. Other demands, as the right of burial in the parish 
churchyards, have yet to be decided." 

Worcester says, " ' In Ireland,' as it is observed by Sir Henry 
Hardinge, 'five-sixths of the property are Protestant, while five- 
sixths of the population are Catholics;' yet the established re- 
ligion is that of the Church of England, with a richly endowed 
clergy ; while the Catholic clergy derive their support from vol- 
untary contributions, and from fees from their people, who are, 
for the most part, extremely poor. 

"In Scotland, a strenuous effort was made to establish the right 
of congregations to choose their own ministers : but the advo- 
cates of this measure, after a long contest, failed of their object ; 
and, in 1843, '^bi^^-it four hundred and sixty out of somewhat 
more than twelve hundred ministers of the Established Church 
' seceded, in order to free themselves from the interference of 
the civil courts in ecclesiastical matters.' The seceders, con- 
sisting of the ministry, and such of the laity as followed them, — 
a large and respectable body, — -now form the 'Free Church of 
Scotland.' " 

If, as our own Sumner said, "Nothing is settled which is not 
right," these tyrannies will, in our generation or a succeeding, 
cease by the cutting down of the tnmk itself, — the tyranny of 
the attempt to establish a religion by the State. 

(4.) " The Establishment is an injury to the State. When 
governments undertake impossibilities, they frequently inflict 
intolerable grievances, or bring themselves into contempt. Gov- 
ernments have no jurisdiction over the conscience : this is 
extra-territorial. Governments cannot afford to lose the sympa- 
thy, or encounter the just prejudice, of the governed, or do pal- 
pable injustice. An Establishment fosters notions of arbitrary 
government, cultivates opposition to liberal principles." " A 
reference to the troubled condition of political affairs in Brazil, 
Mexico, France, Germany, Austria, Spain, and Italy, shows that 
the union is perplexing governments, obstructing reform, foment 
ing strife and war." "The State offers a premium to insincerity 
and hypocrisy. 1 o get honors and emoluments, men become 



THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 105 

members of the Established Church. Moral principle is eradi- 
cated when men affect conversion to be sheriffs, magistrates, 
and judges, and when a petty constable is forbidden to execute 
process until he shall have received the sacrament of the Lord's 
Supper from the hands of a regularly ordained clergyman as a 
part of the prescribed induction into office." ^ 

(5.) The State control over the Church is an injury to the 
Church and to religion. 

" Public profession of a State religion is sometimes conjoined 
with private incredulity. Infidelity has taken refuge under 
cover of an Establishment; abounds where religion is enforced 
by law. Germany and France, with their scepticism, are not 
persuasive of an Establishment, All the sovereigns of England, 
from Henry VIII. to James II., during a period of one hundred 
and forty years, — the boy Edward VI. excepted, — employed 
their supremacy to extinguish vital religion.^ Froude states 
that at one time ordinations were bestowed on men of lewd and 
corrupt behavior." " Patronage is invariably a source of cor- 
ruption." " An endowment secularizes a denomination, and 
attracts the worldly, the selfish, the ambitious. The system of 
presentation to benefices is an afflictive malady. Advowsons 
are regular articles of merchandise, advertised in the news- 
papers, and sold at public outcry or private sale. From this 
legal right of presentment, regardless of the consent of the in- 
habitants of the parish, have come non-residence, huge salaries, 
starving incomes, sporting and dissolute clergymen. Men of 
frivolous characters, of infidel principles, hold livings as prop- 
erty, and bestow them for other considerations than a desire to 
save souls, or promote the Redeemer's kingdom."^ 

In his latest story, Charles Reade — who, we presume, does not 
libel — sketches, as present with others at a gaming-table at 
Homljurg, " an Anglican rector, betting fivers, and nonchalant 
in the absence of his flock and the Baptist minister." 

It is another Englishman, — who, we believe, did not have to 
leave England to find examples for his well-known noble por- 
traiture of the mmistry^ — who, nevertheless, paints other ex- 

1 Curry. ^ Noel's Union of Church and State, 59. ^ Curry. 



1 



lo6 THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 

amples under the corrupting influence of a State Church, 

thus : — 

" But loose in morals, and in manners vain ; 
In conversation frivolous ; in dress 
Extreme ; at once rapacious and j^rofuse ; 
Frequent in park, with lady at his side, 
Ambling, and prattling scandal as he goes, 
But rare at home, and never at his books 
Or with his pen save when he scrawls a card ; 
Constant at routs ; familiar with a round 
Of ladyships ; a stranger to the poor; 
Ambitious of preferment for its gold ; 
And well prepared by ignorance and sloth, 
By infidelity, and love of the world. 
To make God's work a sinecure ; a slave 
To his own pleasures and his patron's pride." 

COWPER : Task, Bk. 2, 378-391. 

'"'' Legal uniformity was the curse of the Church. The state 
of rehgion at the accession of Wilham III. was, according to 
Archbishop Leighton, ' the most corrupt lie had ever seen ; and 
the clergy were equally destitute of strictness in life, and zeal 
and laboriousness in work : ' while Bishop Burnet observes, that 
they were most remiss in labors among the people ; adding, ' The 
main body of our clergy have always appeared dead and lifeless 
to me ; and, instead of animating, they rather seem to lay one 
another to sleep.' "^ 

Strange, indeed, would it be, if the whole management of the 
Church, choice of bishops and pastors, by a worldly power, 
could foster spirituality, or gladden the spiritually-minded. 

"It is, not, nor it cannot come to, good." 

(6.) Finally, the State Church cannot accomplish so much for 
religion as a free Church. 

Parkinson says, " What the Nonconformists have proved is 
the might of the principle, — voluntaryism as a means of exist- 
ence, its sufficiency not only for the maintenance of the ordi- 
nances of religion and the support of the ministry, but for the 
diffusion of the blessings of Christianity both at home and 
abroad." 

^ Parkinson, 306. 



THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 107 

" We bear much," .says Baldwin Brown, " of the toleration of 
the Church of England. I confess to a feeling of strong 
impatience when I hear and read about it. Three times in the 
three great crises of her history, — in the sixteenth, seventeenth, 
and eighteenth centuries, — the Church of England has delib- 
erately purged herself of her noblest, wisest, and most Chris- 
tian members. She expelled the Puritans ; she expelled the 
Nonconformists ; she expelled, practically, the Methodists. 
Thrice has she purged out her most vital elements ; thrice has 
she destroyed her fertility, and left herself dying in wealth, 
dignity, and ceremony, while the pure, noble, glowing life which 
would have quickened her passed outside her pale forever, and 
organized churches on the apostolic model, which have been 
the salt and the light of religion in this English land, in her 
room. And I believe, that, in the very nature of things, it was 
simply inevitable that it should be so. The Scotch National 
Church has repeated the same suicidal policy, and has expelled 
the very men whom it should have been most proud to retain, — 
the men who proved by their self-sacrifice that the flame of the 
divine life burnt pure and bright on the altar of their hearts. 

"That organization of Christianit}^ which is possible in a 
National Church leaves little room for burning zeal and intense 
vitality. Its religious activity must, under the very best con- 
ditions, be largely a thing of rule and order and law. The 
independent movement of a man like Penry or Cartwright, 
obeying the inspiration of a higher will, can find but little free 
play within its pale. As matter of necessity, it must look 
suspiciously on the movement of a vigorous and independent 
life. It is.the natural and apparently the necessary policy of all 
highly organized and established churches to expel their most 
vital elements ; and it is their Nemesis. These repeated ejec- 
tions leave them exhausted of their divine energy : they waste 
and perish, while the life which they have cast out grows strong 
and fruitful, passes into new and independent forms, and creates 
churches more harmonious with the divine idea, — churches 
which aim at. the national establishment of religion by Chris- 
tianizing the very heart of the community." ^ 

^ Eccles. Essays, 317. 



lo8 THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 

This is not wonderful when we consider the force of divine 
and spiritual motives. Parkinson says of the idea that the 
Church needs the State's patronage, " On such a theory it is 
wonderful how the gospel ever came to prevail at all. It won 
its victories, through the energy of preachers who were neither 
established nor endowed, over religions that possessed both 
these supposed benefits." 

"The Nonconformists have multiplied their religious agencies 
in still greater proportion. By them, far more than by the mem- 
bers of the Established Church, has the work of Sunday-school 
instruction been carried on. They have never abated their 
advocacy or stinted their aid in behalf of the great catholic and 
evangelical religious societies, as the British and Foreign Bible 
Society, the Tract Society, and the various modes of town and 
city missions; and have often assumed the whole burden of the 
local support of such societies, because the clergy have held 
aloof from any action that was not of a distinctly 'Church' or 
sectarian kind. They were the first to originate, and, according 
to their numbers and wealth, have been far the most liberal in 
sustaining, the great missionary societies which have carried 
Christianity to India, China, and the islands of the sea^ and in 
three-quarters of a century have materially changed the aspect 
of humanity. They set the example of using the press for the 
spread of religious knowledge, especially among the poor, by 
cheap magazines and other publications; and still maintain the 
lead in the number of such productions. They also have gone 
far towards solving that problem which is the despair of Church 
congresses, — the interesting of what is popularly called the laity 
in religious work, and employing them as teachers, preachers, 
visitors, class-leaders, managers of church temporals, honorary 
secretaries of local religious and benevolent societies, according 
to the fitness they may discover amongst the members of their 
churches. And they have done all this in addition to the entire 
support of their own religious worship, — from the laying of the 
first stone of the building to the payment of the last penny of 
the minister's stipend." " In the doing of Christian work, it 
would be the right arm, and not the left, that would be para- 



THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 109 

lyzed if Nonconformity in England should cease from its 
labors." ^ 

The accommodation provided by evangelical Nonconformists 
is already 4,894,548 sittings as against 5,317,915 sittings in the 
Established Church. Such is the vitality of a church without 
establishment. 

" These two movements," says Baldwin Brown, " have been 
very plainly concurrent, — the multiplication of voluntary teach- 
ers and churches, and the weakening of the Establishment prin- 
ciple, which has at length grown so weak, that, in the judgment 
of the Primate of all England, it has but a few years' lease of 
life " 2 

In the English Colonies, voluntaryism or willinghood has, in 
a short time, borne noble fruit. The Bishop of Ontario in 
1854 protested against it with indignation and grief : in 1869 
he said, " I candidly confess that I would not exchange the 
present condition of the Canadian Church for her condition as 
an endowed Establishment." Just as gladdening fruit has the 
voluntary system borne in Australia, Jamaica, New Zealand, and 
the Bahamas. Let one speak for all, — Rev. J. W. Coxe of Ade- 
laide : " We have here no State Church, and none but those 
who are thus free can tell the blessing of the deliverance." 

No American, we hardly need say, wants or feels the lack of 
a State Church. 

Baldwin Brown says, " I am no eulogist of the United States. 
There is something in their Christian life which contrasts, and 
to my mind unfavorably, with the tone and temper of ours." 
Yet he says, "The nation which most constantly recognizes 
God in connection with all its national experiences, the chas- 
tisements, humiliations, and triumphs of its life ; the nation in 
which the Christian ministry receives its most abundant honor ; 
in which a Christian sanctuary is recognized as the first and 
most essential structure in every settlement in the wilderness ; 
the nation in which Christian communities are most numerous 
and influential, and Christian activities most strenuous and 
successful, — is the nation in which there is not, and never has 

1 Parkinson, 259, 260. * Brown, 320. 



no THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 

been, an Established Church. The comparison between the 
United States and England in all that concerns the visible 
marks and badges of a Christian people would be, on the whole, 
to our disadvantage. Freedom has secured there results which 
privilege and endowment have failed to secure here ; and simple 
preachers of the word — Independents too — there exercise an 
influence on public affairs which is not approached in England, 
even by the most distinguished bishops of the Established 
Church." 1 

Parkinson remarks, " Voluntaryism in America, measured by 
its results, furnishes abundant evidence of efificienc}^ It may 
be safely averred that religion has gained a stronger hold upon 
the people of that country than it maintains in England to-day, 
where the enactments and endowments of a thousand years 
have cursed it with control, and made it to limp by supplying 
it with crutches." 

Williams shows this in the tangible form of figures. " By 
the census for 1872, there were in America 72,459 religious 
organizations, 63,082 church-buildiiags, 21,665,062 sittings, 
and, in the possession of the religious bodies, not less than 
;^7o,896,7i6 worth of property. It has also been computed 
that there is religious accommodation for fifty-six out of the 
fifty-eight per cent of the population for whom it is required ; 
so that there is quite sufficient room in the churches for those 
who wish to attend them." ^ 

" It is supposed that the Protestant churches of America 
raise annually for religious purposes at least fifty million dol- 
lars." 

" If any one," says Pres. Woolsey, " were to ask the religious 
men of all Protestant denominations whether they would accept 
of State support to religion, given in the least objectionable 
form, — that of a general tax, — to be devoted according to the 
ratio of the members of all denominations, or even to all Protes- 
tant denominations, they would, I think, with one voice say 
'No!'"3 

1 Brown, 329, 330. 

2 J. Carvell Williams : Voluntaryism in the United States and Canada. 

8 Rev. Theodore Woolsey, D.D. : Paper before Evangelical Alliance, 1S73. 



.THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. in 

" The more the Church threw herself on willinghood, the 
richer would be the fruits she would gather." 

The words of the Bishop of Ontario are worthy to be the 
concluding sentence here : "77z^ Church possesses a salient spring 
of life when she falls back on first principles ; and surely she has 
some grounds for thinking that principles, which, in the first three 
centuries, conquered the conque7'ors of the world, can do so agaiii, if 
necessity required J^^ 

(vi.) On the other side, we recur to the attempt of the Church 
to control the State. 

The nation has a confiict for its sovereign life and liberty — 
with all which that involves — with any church which seeks to 
rule it. 

Mr. Mulford shall stand as foreman to speak, better than we 
can, what we have to say on this theme. 

"The irreconcilable hostility of Rome to the being of na- 
tions has never had more open avowal than in this century." 
" This antagonism of Roman ecclesiasticism is involved in its 
necessary postulate," " since it denies to the individual and to 
the nation a real and integral moral being, the realization of 
a divine vocation in the moral order of the world, which is not 
formulated through it." " The Church will concede to the 
nations, therefore, no spiritual life or powers, no real freedom, 
no fulfilment of a divine vocation in conscious obedience to a 
Divine Will. It assumes the working of the divine energy, and 
the fulfilment of the divine purpose in itself alone, and in the 
individual and nation only as formulated through it." 

" The nations have been involved in a conflict with Rome 
for their integral unity and being. The struggle has been for 
their existence, their order, their freedom. There is none, as 
it has sought to realize its freedom, that has been exempt from 
the secret or open assault of Rome. Its attack has taken on 
every form ; and there is no weapon, however cruel, and no 
device, however false, which it has not used, and no ally, 
however evil, which it has not engaged. It has appeared on 
every field as the foe of the life and liberties of nations." 

1 Speech, 1869. 



112 THE STATE AND THE CHURCH, 

"The Papacy has been the eternal, implacable foe of Italian 
independence and Italian unity. It never would permit a power- 
ful national kingdom to unite Italy." 

"Whether the United States will be involved in an immedi 
ate conflict with Rome lies in her future. While there are 
noble but still few exceptions, her unity and education and 
freedom will meet, in Roman Catholicism, it may be a guarded 
and often concealed, but an unceasing antagonist. Those who 
see in the course of the Christian centuries only the develop- 
ment of a dogma, and regard Protestantism as an intellectual 
conflict, can find no cause for apprehension. M. Guizot turns 
from speculations on the essence of Christianity to advocate a 
confederacy in Italy, and the maintenance of the temporal 
power of the Pope ; but, to those for whom the conflict of so 
many centuries has a deeper reality, the ecclesiasticism of Rome 
bears another character. Milton was the statesman of a greater 
age, and was a wider scholar, and of fairer sympathies ; but for 
him it was ' the aid red dragon.' It was to be met by the 
nation in a struggle of life and death ; and the nation will not 
maintain its unity or its being if she meet it only as a material 
force. The Church will not give place to an atheistic State, 
nor to a materialized civilization. The end of history is not 
attained, and the destination of humanity is not realized, in that. 
The nation can meet the forces with which it has to contend, 
only as it realizes its own moral being, and recognizes its origin 
and end in God." 

No MAN OUGHT TO HAVE OFFICE OR CITIZENSHIP IN AMERICA 
WHO DOES NOT RECOGNIZE THE StATE AS, UNDER GOD, SUPREME 
IN HER SPHERE, TO WHICH ALONE HIS CIVIL LOYALTY IS DUE, TO 
WHICH HE IS WILLING TO SWEAR AND MAINTAIN ALLEGIANCE. 



THE STATE SCHOOLS AND RELIGION. 



I 



( 



4 



THE RECOGNITION OF GOD IN PUBLIC 
EDUCATION BY READING THE BIBLE. 



A NORTH-EAST Wind has been blowing steadily over the land, 
with intermittent gusts more or less furious, during the last score 
or more of years, on the Bible in the Public Schools. Hope is 
that this storm will, on fair discussion, pass its fury, and the air 
grow calm and sunny again. 

A YEAR ago the writer attempted to reach bottom on one of 
the vexed questions of the day in a paper on " Taxing God's 
House." Dissatisfied with any of the ways of meeting the kin- 
dred question of the Bible in the Public Schools, as not coming 
to the root of the matter, he ventures this essay on the topic of 
the heading. These thoughts were first presented a week or 
two after Bishop McQuaid's address, in Horticultural Hall, on 
"The Public School Question as viewed by a Romanist." His 
main principle bearing on this topic is specious, but unsound, — 
that the parental responsibility for the child's salvation limits his 
public education by the State to what the father chooses he shall 
learn. Carried out, this principle would' ignore the right of gov- 
ernment to punish such a child for crime, or control him in any 
way. The State, in its sphere, is as responsible that he should 
be a good citizen, as the father, in his sphere, that he should be 
a "wise son." 

Three procedures in regard to the matter may be thought of, 
which are, we think, sound in the respective circumstances: — 

I. There seems to be no reason why a body of men, like the 

"5 



Ii6 THE RECOGNITION OF GOD 



Pilgrims or the Hernhutters, might not acquire title to a territory 
within natural limits, and then, by compact (as in " The May- 
flower's" cabin) or by constitution, decree that the country 
founded should exist to carry out God's purposes. It is a ques- 
tion, whether that will not be the millennial experience. In the 
schools of such a nation, the Bible would not only be read, it 
would be studied. Now, it is susceptible of a powerful argu- 
ment, that the founders, although they may not by law have 
made these States Christian^ nevertheless showed their infcntioii 
that they should be built up on the religion and morality of the 
Scriptures, — an intention shown in the early history of schools, 
and the motto of Harvard College, " Christo et Ecdcsiae.''^ 
Though this action of the fathers was not positive law, it showed 
no less what is worthy of perpetual respect, — a respect shown 
by S071S of the father Sy whatever may be the spirit of foreign-born^ — 
a dear intention to shape the institutions of this land by the Bible. 

And yet, though the intention of the fathers is worthy of full 
respect, it cannot be considered regnant and binding in the 
legal or complete moral sense ; since, on this side the Atlantic, 
lav/ and constitution are not merely the collected opinions of 
great names in the past, or even the national policy of the past, 
but only that which is the present will of the people, declared 
in the present constitutions, in the laws, and in popular vote. 

11. Another legitimate procedure would be the appointment 
of some score of our best statesmen as a high commission 
to consider this question in a broad, statesmanlike way : Is it 
true that this book, the Bible, is intimately connected with the 
welfare of nations ? Is it true that New England and Scotland 
owe much of their intellectual discipline to the Bible ? Is it 
true that you can note the difference between the Protestant 
and Catholic cantons of Switzerland ; that, in sailing up the 
Danube, you can tell when you pass from the dominion of the 
Koran to the dominion of the Bible by the neatness and thrift 
of the villaires ? Was Victor Cousin riMit when he said of 
Luther's Bible, " It has greatly aided in the moral and religious 
education of the people " 1 " Every wise man will rejoice in 
this j for, with three-fourths of the population, morality can be 



IN PUBL IC ED UCA TION'. 117 



instilled only through the medium of religion." Was Victoria 
right, when, in response to the African prince, she sent her 
ambassador with a costly Bible, with this message from her lips, 
" Tell the prince that this is the secret of England's great- 
ness " ? 

Let the opinion and recommendation of such a commission 
find embodiment in some law, made on the ground that they 
found that the prosperity of the State is intimately connected 
with this book. This commission would be greatly facilitated 
in the acceptance of their work by the simultaneous discussion 
of the same question by the people in their lyceums and debat- 
ing clubs. 

But now a strong argument might be made, that;, in effect, 
such a high commission has sat in this country ; that John 
Adams, John Quincy Adams, Lewis Cass, Everett, Greenleaf, 
Jefferson, Kent, McLean, Rush, Seward, Story, Washington, 
and Webster, in their noble statements,^ have represented 
American statesmanship in the affirmation of the connection of 
the reading of this book with the welfare of the State, as when 
Greenleaf says, " Without these sanctions, the laws are no 
longer observed ; oaths lose their hold on the conscience ; 
promises are violated ; frauds are multiplied ; and moral obli- 
gation is dissolved. These securities are found in the Bible 
alone;" and John Quincy Adams says, "The first and almost 
the only book deserving universal attention is the Bible ; " and 
as Jefferson writes, " I have always said, and I always will say, 
that the studious perusal of the sacred volume will make 
better citizens, better fathers, and better husbands ; " and as 
Washington says, " Of all the dispositions and habits which 
lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensa- 
ble supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of 
patriotism who should labor to subvert these pillars of human 
happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and 
citizens." 

These are the voice of a high commission of American 
statesmen, not the less powerful that it represents the sense of 

1 Homage to the Book. Samuel W. Bailey, New York, 1869. 



ii8 THE RECOGNITION OF GOD 

our public men in all periods of our history. Yet although, in 
moral impressiveness, these testimonies of America's great 
statesmen, collected, would be equivalent to the voice of a high 
commission, still it must be admitted, that unless this commis- 
sion were legally appointed, or accepted by the suffrage of the 
people, their report, however valuable and impressive, could not 
be considered law or constitution. 

III. But now a third procedure — that which we proposed to 
ourselves — is to consider the subject de novo, and from a point 
of view farther back than the book. 

We are seeking valid ground, rock foundation, for the Scrip- 
ture in schools, under oicr present free Constitution ; "and the dry 
land appears." 

This view is in accordance with our popular idea, — the sever- 
ance of Church and State. This idea being reg7ta7it, what shall 
we hold in regard to the action of the State in connection with 
the Scriptures in our schools ? We shall present, as we have 
presented, only such considerations as we believe are irref- 
ragable. 

Two guiding thoughts^ which " shine aloft like stars," illumi- 
nate us in considering the subject of education. Tirst, The 
principle of the Swiss Pestajozzi, who, " for the last hundred 
years, has exerted a greater influence than any other man on 
education in England, America, and the north of Europe." 
Pestalozzi's first principle is, that ^'■Education relates to the whole 
man, and consists in the drawing forth, strengthening, and per- 
fecting all the faculties with which an all-wise Creator has 
endowed him, — physical, intellectual, and moral ; or, to use 
Pestalozzi's own words, ' Education has to do with the hand, the 
head, and the heart.' " Second, The guiding thought, that — to 
apply somewhat loosely, perhaps, a phrase of Ruskin — education 
should be '"''fouJidational and progressive.^^ The heart of a subject, 
its foundation, its keystone, that by which it "con-sists," should 
not be neglected or ignored. A man is not educated on any 
topic so long as he observes not its central fact or facts. 

These guiding stars will not quit our firmament while we dis- 
cuss the grave subject of education in the State. 



IN PUBLIC EDUCATION. 1 19 

Two propositions, then, we lay down : — 

God should be recognized in the place of public edu- 
cation. 

All natural science conducts to the One, to God. Zoology, 
botany, the " star-eyed science," geology, physiology, all lead to 
a great Being. " Each scientist," says Prof. Park, " claims that 
his science most illustrates the wisdom of the Creator." Bacon's 
well-known " Essay on Atheism " is a philosopher's opinion. 
"The mind of man," "beholding the chain " "of second causes," 
" confederate and linked together, must needs fly to Deity and 
Providence." 

All who heard Agassiz' magnificent oration on Humboldt 
well remember the pains which he took to free that man of 
science from the imputation of atheism. " To these I venture 
to say," says Agassiz, "Humboldt did not belong. He had too 
logical a mind to assume that a harmoniously-combined whole 
could be the result of accidental occurrences. In the few in- 
stances where, in his work, he uses the name of God, it appears 
plainly that he believes in a Creator as the Lawgiver, and 
primary Originator of all things." And so eager is he to free 
Humboldt from what he seems to feel is the unscholarly stain 
of atheism, that he quotes two passages from Humboldt's works, 
" Gottes erhabenes Reich " (" God's Majestic Realm ") ; and 
the other at the close of his description of the earthquake at 
Caraccas, " Es war Gottes nicht menschenhand die hier zum 
grabgelaute zwang" (" It was the hand of God, and not the 
hand of man, which rang that funeral dirge "). 

Since writing the above, the noble incident in the life of 
Agassiz himself, from newspaper sources, and also as told in 
golden rhyme by the admiring Whittier, has come to my eye. 
It is the naturalist and the poet together confessing God. 

" On Tuesday, July 8, 1873, Prof. Agassiz opened his Ander- 
son School of Natural History on Penikese Island, in Buzzard's 
Bay. He made no parade about it. Every thing was managed 
with quiet good sense," " On the eve of his great enterprise 
he could afford time to acknowledge God. Standing before his 
little company, met for the first time on the scene of new studies 



120 THE RECOGNITION OF GOD 

and toil, Prof. Agassiz said that they were in a strange position, 
and were strangers to each other. He felt more than he could 
express. He regretted that the gentleman to whom they owed 
the place was not present. As he knew of no one present whom 
he could call upon to invoke the divine blessing, he asked all 
present silently to give thanks to the Creator. After a moment 
of silence, he proceeded with the services. 

" Science," continues the narrator, " is God's handmaid, and 
the truly scientific man cannot be undevout. The Creator is 
pleased when the votaries and scholars of science own its 
divine kindred, and ask him for its gifts. He blessed Solomon 
above all other kings, and gave the reason thus : ' Because 
thou hast not asked riches, wealth, or honor, but hast asked 
wisdom and knowledge for thyself.' 

"We know of but few finer pictures than that one on the 
Island of Penikese, where our acknowledged modern king of 
science, with bared head and reverent mien, amid the scattered 
stones and the rude gatherings of his projected work, stood with 
his forty pupils, waiting on the Almighty Creator." 

'' Poetry is beautiful truth," said a college classmate. There- 
fore Whittier saw this noble incident as invested with a halo. 

THE PRAYER OF AGASSIZ. 

" On the Isle of Penikese, 
Ringed about by sapphire seas, 
Fanned by breezes soft and cool, 
Stood the master with his school. 
Said the master to the youth, 
' We have come in search of truth, 
Trying with uncertain key 
Door by door of mystery ; 
We are reaching through His laws 
To the garment-hem of Cause, — 
Him the endless, unbegun, 
The Unnamable, the One, 
Light of all our light the Source, 
Life of life, and Force of force, — 
As with fingers of the blind. 
We are groping here to find 



IN PUBLIC EDUCATION, 12 1 

"What the hieroglyphics mean 
^Of the Unseen in the seen ; 
What the thought which underlies 
Nature's masking and disguise ; 
What it is that hides beneath 
Blight and bloom, and birth and death. 
By past efforts unavailing, 
Doubt and error, loss and failing, 
Of our weakness made aware, 
On the threshold of our task 
Let us light and guidance ask ; 
Let us pause in silent prayer.' 
Then the master in his place 
Bowed his head a little space ; 
And the leaves by soft airs stirred, 
Lapse of wave, and cry of bird. 
Left the solemn hush unbroken 
Of that wordless prayer unspoken, 
While its wish, on earth unsaid. 
Rose to heaven interpreted." 

The recognition of God is part of a scientific education. 

History requires the hand of God. The definition by Dr. 
Edward A. Lawrence, which he has kindly allowed me to use, is 
philosophical : " History is God's agency in the origin, develop- 
ment, and government of the human race by means of natural 
law, supernatural forces, and the moral freedom of the subjects ; 
or, more concisely, it is the actual course of events in the evolu- 
tion of the divine plan in creating and governing the world." 

Gervinus says, " My work is only what all historical narratives 
ought to be, — a vindication of the decrees of Providence." 
Says D' Aubigne, " History should be made to live with its own 
proper life. God is this life : God must be acknowledged — God 
proclaimed — in history. The history of the world should pur- 
port to be the annals of the government of the Supreme King." 

No one is educated who fails to see God in history. The 
American discerns him at Plymouth Rock ; the Israelite, in the 
Exodus ; the Frenchman, in Joan of Arc ; the Englishman, in the 
destruction of the Armada. " Afflavit Jehovah, dissipati sunt."^ 

1 Motto of the Armada Medal. 



122 THE RECOGNITION OF GOD 

Ethics as the science of duty runs as on a sunbeam up to 
God. Great legal minds have felt how the second table of the 
law rests on the first. Duties, the performance of which is a 
part of good citizenshii^, and which are needful to make a State 
virtuous and happy, are felt in some way to derive from God ; 
as witness the taking of an oath to be truthful. 

The science of governineiit traces back to God. The " social 
compact " theory would not now be held by an educated man. 
"The powers that be are ordained of God." It is a part of 
education needful to a citizen to know that divine right goes 
with the constituted government, and good citizenship requires 
a recognition of the " divinity that doth hedge " a magistrate. 
Cicero (quoted by Lord Bacon) makes a part of true Roman 
statesmanship " haec una sapientia," &c., " the sole true wisdom, 
the having perceived that all things are regulated and governed 
by the providence of the immortal gods, through which wisdom 
we have subdued all races and. nations." 

In the schoolroom of the State, therefore, — where a true edu- 
cation, and not merely a congeries of facts, is given, — the place 
of public instruction, God — the God of science, the God of 
history, the God of duty, the God of nations — ought to be 
openly recognized. This recognition should be made distinct 
and regnant by reading high and impressive thoughts concerning 
him^ and by reverent address to him. 

Primarily it matters not how this recognition should be made. 
The Chinese schoolboy always makes his act of reverence to 
the statue, or the name on a tablet, of Confucius. The question 
is not concerning one particular book, or the divine claim of 
any book, or the authoritative teaching of the particular doc- 
trines of any book. The main point is that already insisted 
upon, — the recognitio7i of God. A book of eclectic thoughts on 
God, from the sages of the world, would be appropriate for a 
public school. Max Miiller says, while speaking of the Vadas, 
'' The late good Bishop Cotton, in his address to the students 
of a missionary institution at Calcutta, advised them to use a 
certain hymn of the Rig- Veda in their daily prayers." 

The reading from some devotional volume is one of the most 



IN PUBLIC EDUCATION. 123 



natural devices for expressing and inspiring worship. Religious 
reading accompanies prayer. The standard thoughts, the high- 
est the race has known, not only most worthily recognize 
the Being they describe, but are the best prompter to new 
thoughts. x\lexander, Plutarch tells us, carried his " casket- 
copy " of the Iliad with him, and laid it with his sword under 
his pillow at night. 

An interesting illustration of the naturalness of recourse to 
standard devotional works as conveying and prompting w^orship 
is found in the works of Benjamin Franklin. In November, 
1728, when Franklin was twenty-two years old, he commenced 
a writing which he called " Articles of Belief, and Acts of 
Religion.'' He begins with a quotation from Addison's 
" Cato," then states his belief in God, and concludes with an 
"Adoration." Then he proceeds: "After this, it will not be 
improper to read part of some such book as Ray's ' Wisdom of 
God in the Creation,' or Blackmore on ' The Creation,' and the 
Archbishop of Cambray's ' Demonstration of the Being of a 
God,' &:c. ; or else spend some minutes in a serious silence, con- 
templating on these subjects. Then sing Milton's ' Hymn to 
the Creator,' — 

'These are thy glorious works, Parent of good.'" 

After which, " Here follows the reading of some book, or part of 
a book, discoursing on and exciting to moral virtue." This is 
followed by a ^' Petition." ^ 

But now there are certain good reasons ivhy the Bible should 

BE THE BOOK CONCERNING GOD, WHICH SHOULD BE USED IN 
RECOGNIZING HIM IN THE AMERICAN SCHOOL. 

Not because the Bible is inspired. Our argument does not 
claim that ; nor does it, in any of these articles, proceed on that 
assumption. 

But on these unquestioned grounds : — 

I. All the nations of Europe, the languages of Western civili- 
zation, hold this book, the Bible, as containing the sublimest, 
most righteous, most gracious views of this Divine Being. This 

* Franklin's Works, Sparks's Edition, ii. pp. i and following. 



124 ^-^^ RECOGNITION OF GOB 

needs no illustration. One need only refer to the little volume, 
" Homage to the Book," and to what is said there by Goethe, 
Burke, Hale, Locke, Carlyle, Scott, Milton, Everett, Webster, 
Washington, Seward, Oxenstiern, Jefferson, Guizot, Coleridge, 
Bacon, Napoleon, and the eminent Oriental scholars, Selden 
and Sir William Jones.-^ 

2. The Bible, early translated into all the languages of Europe, 
is that book whose language and diction in regard to God per- 
meate all our literatures. It is not the Scandinavian or the 
Hindoo phraseology about God, but that of the Scriptures, which 
is most familiar to all readers of the European literatures. It 
might be added, that all these literatures, as has often been 
proved, owe much of their riches to the germs of Scripture 
thought ; and the modern literatures cannot be understood 
without the Bible. 

3. The Bible is the book of the founders of our nation's in- 
stitutions. They freely used the Bible in moulding their early 
institutions. The church-meeting suggested the town-meeting ; 
and thence, in Jefferson's mind, the democracy of the republic 
was born. This book, which shaped our institutions, rather than 
any other, should have the preference in a public recognition 
of God. Rufus Choate once said, " Banish the Bible from 
our public schools ? Never ! .so long as there is left a piece of 
Plymouth Rock big enough for a gun-flint." This is not a mere 
extravaganza of eloquence. There is a reason why, in the 
quick mind of Choate, the Bible and Plymouth Rock flashed 
together. At Plymouth our institutions were born of the Bible, 
as by the Bible they grew in vigor. 

It may be added, that the nation is satisfied with the power- 
ful and salutary influence of the Bible upon her institutions and 
upon public morality. Ninety-nine hundredths of Americans 
whose ancestors thirty years back were on our soil coincide 
with Jefferson's words, already quoted, that " the studious pe- 
rusal of the sacred volume will make better citizens, better 
fathers, and better husbands." 

4. This book, of all religious volumes in all climes, gives the 

1 Homage to the Book, Samuel W. Baiiey. 



IN PUBLIC EDUCATION. 125 

truest cosmogony, the only one which is not open to ridicule, 
and a view of God throughout which is sublime, and in no way 
below the teachings of advanced civilization. 

5. This book contains, wrapped up in it, and developed in it, 
the truest political science. The system of circuit judges is 
biblical; also the idea of associate judges. Democracy in 
Church and State is set forth as the divine idea. Kingship is 
not commended as the best type of government ; yet obedience 
to constituted government is commanded. See Wines's " He- 
brew Commonwealth." 

6. This book deserves the preference, because it is regarded 
as the best attempt ever made to describe the divine and the 
human. God is the Supreme Being : man is a being made in 
his likeness. Any serious attempt to describe these two — 
God, man — must result in a treatise which will contain vital 
and educating forces. We do not assert here that this book is 
inspired, but that, by the almost unanimous suffrage of educated 
men, this volume is the most successful endeavor to describe 
man and his Maker. We quote a few eloquent words : " It is 
the book of God, and the book of man. It is the book of the 
divine nature. It is the book of man as well as of God. 
Human nature is as fully revealed as the divine. They are 
revealed in comparison ; they are revealed in contrast ; in 
things similar, and in things dissimilar. The fountains of the 
great deep of human thought, of human action, are broken up ; 
and man, inward and outward, is contemplated, not in the dim 
taper-light of time, but the broad light of eternity." ^ 

7. This book deserves the preference in the recognition of 
God in the school, because it contains the one unique, perfect 
man, Jesus Christ. There can be no doubt his character enters 
widely and deeply into all modern philanthropy and ethics. 
Hospitals came from the hem of Christ's garment. " It is 
Christian, or it is not Christlike," is the modern criterion. Scep- 
tics do homage to Christ's character, and all high art. " In 
Memoriam,"^ " Paradise Regained," Ary Scheffer's " Christus 
Consolator," Thorwaldsen's " Christus Benedicens," attest how 

1 Dr. Allen Morron : Lecture on the Bible. 



J 26 THE RECOGNITION OF GOD 

this man dominates modern ideas of life and duty and benevo- 
lence. 

These appearing to us irrefutable reasons why this book should 
he used in the recognition of God in the school, practically one 
of two ways may be taken in its use. 

1. The Eclectic Way. This may seem chimerical, but may be 
stated thus : The State may call a convocation of venerated doc- 
tors in the Bible from different sects, Protestant, Papal, Jewish, 
who should be empowered to prepare a manual of extracts from 
the Bible, having for its aim the recognition of God, the same 
for use in the schools. As to a prayer, it would seem that there 
could be no serious objection to the Lord's Prayer, since Rabbi 
Kalisch of Milwaukee (see " Guide for Inquirers ") claims that 
every phrase of this prayer, excepting that about temptation, 
has its germ, or at least corresponding passage, in the old Jew- 
ish writings. But it is doubtful whether such a convocation 
would be harmonious, or wdiether such an eclectic method would 
find favor with them. Our recourse, therefore, is to 

2. The Way of the Majority. That is practically the method 
of to-day, — the use of the Bible i7i the form chosen by the majority 
in any State, with such concessions as are due to the conscien- 
tious scruples of others. 

We do not see how the present law could be made more ac- 
ceptable to the candid of all religious opinions and orders. 
We recite it, because we believe many are unaware how far it is 
from wounding the consciences of any : — 

" The school committee shall require the daily reading of 
some portion of the Bible, without written note or oral com- 
ment, in the public schools : but they shall require no scholar 
to read from any particular version whose parent or guardian 
shall declare that he has conscientious scruples against allow- 
ing him to read therefrom ; nor shall they ever direct any 
school-books calculated to favor the tenets of any particular 
sect of Christians to be purchased or used in any of the public 
schools." — 1862, chap. 57, sect. i. 

In a Jewish commonwealth, if there w^ere one, the Old Tes- 
tament would be the basis of the devotional reading ; in a 



IM PUBLIC EDUCATION. 127 

Papal Statft. should there be one, the Douai version ; in our 
States, — as they are, and as we trust they will forever be, free 
from the domination of any church, — that noble version of the 
Bible should be used in recognizing God in the school which 
was contemporary with " The Mayflower," and was used by the 
fathers of the nation. 



GOD IN THE NATION; THEREFORE IN 
PUBLIC EDUCATION. 



As " flying buttresses " to the argument on " The Recognition 
of God by the Bible in Pubhc Education," for strengthening 
and symmetrically extending the propositions there built up, 
these additional essays appear. 

The syllogism is this : — 

God and Righteousness are essential in the State ; 

The Public School is the only Preparation controlled by the 
State for securing good Citizenship and Statesmanship : 

Therefore God and Righteousness should have place in the 
Public School. 

The second premise needs little remark : its truth will be gen- 
erally acknowledged. Mr. Beecher, indeed, says, "In our day 
of general intelligence, we divide the functions of society, letting 
the Church teach dogma, letting the family teach personal re- 
ligion, and letting the common school perform the task of teach- 
ing intelligence." Now, sufficient righteousness to make a good 
citizen may perhaps, in general, be taught by the family ; but, in 
case that the State is not satisfied with such righteousness as the 
family teaches, — such as the Jesuit taught Charles IX. in prepa- 
ration for St. Bartholomew ; such as the Mormon, the Spartan, 
the Free Lover, the gentleman of light fingers, may please to 
teach his family, — what then ? Has the State no protection to 
itself against the teaching of cellars, and of the cells of Jesuits ? 
Evident it is, that, however the State may " farm put " to any 
128 



GOD IN THE NATION. 1 29 

party the instruction in righteousness which is necessary to her 
well-being, she is responsible for the result, — her character as 
a State. Mr. Beecher, we suppose, would not deny this. His 
words, " we " and " letting," imply that it is a concession to allow 
the school to teach only "intelligence." The wisdom of "farm- 
ing out " her necessary instruction in God and morality, in these 
days of Jesuitism and Mormonism, and home luxury bought by 
public corruption, is questionable. At all events, the State has 
a right — na)^, on it is laid the imperative duty — to teach right- 
eousness, as Dr. Johnson might say, " sufficient to preserve from 
putrefaction." And the public school is the only place which 
she can control to educate her future citizens to this end. It 
was objected to this statement, in a company of gentlemen 
before whom this paper was read, that the State could train her 
citizens in justice and morality by her legislation and her court 
proceedings. We may gratefully allow the great influence upon 
a people of righteous law-making and righteous judgment, with- 
out retracting the statement made. It rests with the people, 
however, how far they will give attention to the study of the 
laws and the judgments of courts. The State, even if it should 
issue brief reports to the people of these two departments, 
could not compel their reading. In the school only, the State 
has a control over her citizens, so far as to dictate what they shall 
read, a?td what moral lessons they shall receive. 

The first prejnise is worthy of more extended remark, that 
God and righteousness are essential in the State. 

Scientifically and philosophically, and then historically, we 
will view this matter. 

THE PHILOSOPHICAL VIEW. 

Since the first paper, and, indeed, since meditating most of 
this, a friend brought to my notice a volume by Mr. E. Mulford, 
" The Nation." This book, we are told, is the product of years 
of thought ; and it seems, on partial examination, not unworthy 
to rank with the famous work of De Tocqueville. In several 
lines of thought gathered here and there in the book, it "mar- 
shals me the way that I was going." 



130 GOD IN THE NATION; 

The argument which I make from principles culled from this 

book may thus be stated as a first proposition on the subject: — 

I. The true theory of the State requires God and his 

RIGHTEOUSNESS IN IT. 

One is glad to set forth the views of so profound a thinker as 
Mr. Mulford, as cdincident with his own. Space forbids little 
more than the mere statement of such propositions of his book 
as bear on the matter in hand. 

1. " The nation is a moral personality." This he sets in 
opposition to the false theories of the nation; as "a necessary 
evil," "a historical accident," "a jural society," "an economic 
society." This is the view of Aristotle and Hegel. Milton 
says, " A nation ought to be like some huge Christian person- 
age, one mighty growth or stature of an honest man, as big and 
compact in virtue as in body ; for, look, what the ground and 
causes are of single happiness to one man, the same ye shall 
find them to a whole State." 

2. " The origin of the nation is in the Divine Will." This he 
sets against the false theories, that the origin of the nation is 
in " the development of the family," in " mere force or might," 
in " some instinct or emotion of man," in "the social compact," 
in " popular sovereignty." 

3. "A nation is sovereign." 

4. The sovereignty of a nation involves the right of its own 
independent existence. " In Rome it was asserted in the words, 
''Videant consules tie quid detrimenti capiat respublicay — "Let 
the consuls watch, that the republic receive no injury." 

5. The nation has its vocation from God, and its responsi- 
bility to him, and its preservation and guidance by him. " The 
realization of its being through its vocation in a moral order is 
in righteousness : not only the law of its being, but the condition 
of the realization of its being, is in righteousness. In its neces- 
sary being, it moves towards this end. Thus, in anarchy and 
oppression and violence and crime, there is a negation of its 
being. Thus also, in so far as it fails of its end, it passes from 
history. As history is the realization of a moral order, in the 
unity of a divine purpose, when the nation ceases to work in its 



THEREFORE IN PUBLIC EDUCATION. 131 

own vocation in it, and to act as a constructive power in the 
harmony of its design, then it no longer has its place in it. It 
is this constant possibility of evil in the nation that involves 
the most real obligation, and is the incitement to the utmost 
energy and vigilance ; and it is this which gives solemnity to 
history." 

He quotes Brownson with approval concerning a recent polit- 
ical school : " It has rejected the divine origin and ground of 
government, and excluded God from the State. They have not 
only separated the State from the Church as an external corpo- 
ration, but from God as its internal Lawgiver, and by so doing 
have deprived the State of her sacredness, inviolability, and 
hold upon the conscience." 

These five propositions are foundational. Each is a principle. 
They deserve great study at this period of our history. Men 
of great ability, borne on surface thought and popular notions, 
are drifting from fundamentals. These propositions deserve 
reperusal and study. If they are true, then God and his 
righteousness are essential in the State. 

II. We pass now to another consideration which has been 
brought to our notice — not in this particular connection, how- 
ever — by an eminent and admiring spectator of our institutions, 
who, while rejoicing in the separation, properly speaking, of 
Church and State, gave it as his opinion, that a republic, of 

ALL FORMS OF NATIONALITY, SHOULD ESPECIALLY BE RELIGIOUS. 

De Tocqueville is discoursing on " The causes which tend to 
maintain democracy in America," and, while speaking of the 
opinions of Americans, makes us aware that his sentiments are 
similar. I transcribe a long but interesting paragraph: "Re- 
ligion in America takes no direct part in the government of 
society: but it must be regarded as the first of their political 
institutions ; for, if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it 
facilitates the use of it." "I am certain that they hold it to be 
indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions." 
" I have known of societies formed by the Americans to send 
out missionaries of the gospel into the North-western States to 
found schools and churches there, lest religion should be suffered 



132 GOD IN THE NATION; 



to die away in those remote settlements, and the rising States be 
less fitted to enjoy free institutions than the people from whom 
they came." " Thus religious zeal is perpetually warmed in 
the United States by the fires of patriotism. These men do not 
act exclusively from a consideration of a future life : eternity is 
only one motive of their devotion to the cause." " They will 
tell you that ' all the American republics are collectively in- 
volved with each other : if the republics of the West were to 
fall into anarchy, or to be mastered by a despot, the republican 
institutions which now flourish upon the shores of the Atlantic 
Ocean would be in great peril. It is, therefore, our interest that 
the new States should be religious in order that they may per- 
mit us to remain free.'" "There are men in France who look 
forward to a republican form of government as a tranquil and 
lasting state, toward w^hich modern society is daily impelled by 
the ideas and manners of the time, and who sincerely desire to 
prepare men to be free. When these men attack religious 
opinions, they obey the dictates of their passions, and not of 
their interests. Despotism may govern without faith; but lib- 
erty cannot. Religion is much more necessary in the republic 
which they set forth in such glowing colors than in the monar- 
chy which they attack : it is more needed in democratic repub- 
lics than any other. How is it possible that society should 
^ escape destruction, if the moral tie be not strengthened in pro- 
portion as the political tie is relaxed ? and what can be done 
with a people who are their own masters, if they be not submis- 
sive to the Deity ? " * 

III. One more consideration in the same direction, that 
God and his righteousness are essential in the State, is, that the 
Bible may perhaps be true ; and, if it is, then the Crea- 
tor OF nations has asserted and shown that he holds 
them steadily to their sphere and duty to him. This con- 
sideration is different from the first proposition. That concerns 
a theory, the true ideal of the State : this consideration implies, 
that, if the Scripture is true, there are positive assertions by One, 
who is King of kings, that he holds them, as he does individuals, 
responsible. 



THEREFORE IN PUBLIC EDUCATION. 133 

This book is remarkable, in that, unlike the Koran, Vedas, 
Confucian Analects, and, indeed, all other books representing a 
grand religion, it contains the spectacle of a great nation, from 
germ and cradle onward, professedly guided by the Almighty, 
and held to a peculiar work, which it was chastised when not 
doing. This theory as here sketched seems true even to per- 
verse minds ; for even Lord Rochester, in his infidelity, averred 
that the existing state of the Jews, scattered in the world, but 
not mingling, was an unanswerable argument for the so-called 
inspired book. 

If this book is true, the nations are, not in a theological, but 
moral order, his sons or wards. If the nations do not observe 
this responsibility to God, the faihire may be their destruction. 

God and his righteousness are set as foundation to the ' 
nations. " Righteousness exalteth a nation." " The powers that 
be are ordained of God." " The nation that will not serve Thee 
shall perish." One passage explicitl}^ draws out the statement 
of God, that he holds nations responsible to him for their char- 
acter, and that he will deal with them according to their charac- 
ter : " At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation and 
concerning a kingdom, to pluck up and to pull down, and to 
destroy it, if that nation against whom I have pronounced turn 
from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought 'to do 
unto them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a 
nation and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it ; if it 
do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent 
of the good wherewith I said I would benefit them." 

If, then, the Bible should be true, by inspiration, — or even if 
it should have stumbled on the truth, — then even a nation begun 
as auspiciously as ours by the Pilgrims may well take heed that 
it set before itself to remember God and his righteousness. 

These three considerations, it would seem, should be sufficient 
to make this truth evident and clear as a theory. 

THE HISTORICAL VIEW. 

Historically, now, the indications are quite as clear that the 

BEST MINDSj THOSE WHICH HAVE BEEN THE LIVING LEADERS 



134 GOD IN THE NATION ; 

OF NATIONS, HAVE SPONTANEOUSLY AFFIRMED GOD AND HIS 

RIGHTEOUSNESS IN THE State. A few illustrations will be 
sufficient. 

Romulus, as soon as Rome was built, reared an altar to Con- 
sus, the god of counsel. Numa not only " called in the assist- 
ance of religion," as Plutarch tells us^, but gave out that some 
goddess gave him wisdom in secret interviews. The Delphic 
oracle consulted by Lycurgus told him that " Apollo had heard 
his request, and promised that. the constitution he should estab- 
lish would be the most excellent in the world." Solon put his 
laws into verse, at least began to do it, in these lines : — • 

" Supreme of gods, whose power we first address, 
This plan to honor, and these laws to bless." 

Draco had already decreed, " It is an everlasting law in Attica 
that the gods are to be worshipped." Demosthenes not only 
opens and closes the immortal Oration on the Crown with invo- 
cation of the Deity, but in it he acknowledges many times the 
guiding hand of God in the affairs of Athens. From the 
height of the Acropolis, Minerva the Protector, a statue in ivory 
nearly fifty feet high, rose above roofs of homes and temples. 
Cicero, in his First Oration against Catiline, exclaims, " Magna 
Diis immortalibus habenda est gratia, atque huic ipsi Jovi Statori, 
antiquissimo custodi hujus urbis," — " Great gratitude' is due to 
the immortal gods, and most of all to Jupiter Stator, the most 
ancient guardian of this city." And in his last paragraph he ad- 
dresses him, " Tu, Jupiter, qui iisdem, quibus haec urbs, auspiciis 
a Romulo es constitutus, quem Statorem hujus urbis atque im- 
perii nominamus," — " Thou, Jupiter, who wast, in the very 
auspices of the origin of the city, declared by Romulus, and whom 
we since iia7ne Stator, guardian of this city and this realm." 

Plato reports to us a dialogue in which Socrates was one of 
the speakers. 

Socrates. — If, then, you wish public measures to be right 
and noble, virtue must be given by you to the citizens. 

Alcibiades. — How could any one deny that ? 

Socrates. — Virtue^ therefore, is that which is to be first pos- 



THEREFORE IN PUBLIC EDUCATION. 135 

sessed, both by you and by every other person who would have 
direction and care, not only for himself, and things dear to, him- 
self, but for the State, and things dear to the State. 

Alcibiades. — You speak truly. 

Socrates. — To act justly and wisely, both you and the State, 

YOU MUST ACT ACCORDING TO THE WILL OF GOD. 

Alcibiades. — It is so. ^ 

When the nation is saved in battle, the " Te Deum " is sung. 
Even Philistia triumphing over Israel sets the ark before her 
" fishy god " Dagon. Joan^ of Arc had on her standard the 
figure of God in the clouds, with the world in his hand, an 
angel on each side presenting him with a fleur-de-lis which he 
was blessing, — beautiful thought of this young girl's mind. 
The reverse had the crown of France held by two angels. 

Collections of coins show that nearly all modern nations send 
from their mints their creed in God in the gold and silver 
stamped, " Dei gratia." Religious national numismatology, 
indeed, discloses a wealth of significant inscriptions. England, — 
sovereign : " Victoria, Dei gratia ; " also " Dirigit Deus gressus 
meos." France, — Louis d'or, " Imperator Christianissimus ; " 
crown, "Sit nomen Domini benedictum." Spain, — doubloon, 
" Carol. IV., Dei gratia ; " dollar, " Fernando VII., por la gratia 
de Dios y la constitution." Portugal, — " Dei gratia ; " " In hoc 
signo vinces ; " " Nata stab. subq. sig." Switzerland, — " Domine, 
conserva nos in pace ; " " Dominus providebit ; " " Cuncta per 
Deum;" " Benedictus sit Jehovah Deus, Dux." Austria, — 
" Dei gratia." Germany, — " Dominus Protector mens ; " " Gott 
und das Vaterland ; " " Dominus Mihi Adictor ; " " Dei gratia ; " 
" Gott segne Unterhalte unsere Bergwerke ; " " In Deo con- 
silium." Tuscany, — " Dirige, Domine, gressus meos ; " "Dom- 
inus spes mea a juventute mea." Belgium and Holland, — 
" Gentium et Ipse dominabitur ; " " Nomen Domini turris for- 
tissima;" "Domini est Regnum;" " Forti et spes nost. Deus." 
Jerusalem, — "Justus Jehovah Judex." 

Even in time of trouble we stamped one coin, " In God we 
trust." Medals for victories often have an ascription to the 

1 Prefixed by Daniel Webster to his Argument on the Girard Will, Works, vi. 135. 



136 GOD IN THE NATION; 

Almighty. Fasts and thanksgivings are State recognitions of 
God, chaplaincies also in legislature, army and navy, and in 
criminal and benevolent institutions. L'Enfant's Plan of 
Washington City (1792) included " (D.) A church intended for 
national purposes, such as public prayers, thanksgivings, funeral 
orations," &c. 

The fathers of the republic looked to the outstretched arm 
of the Almighty. We may M^ell in these days, in which we heed 
especially the commandment " not to be righteous overmuch," 
study the outspoken recognition of God by the founders. 
"When intelligence was received that the British army had 
caj)itulated at Yorktown, it was immediately 

^^ Resolved, That Congress will, at two o'clock this day, go in proces- 
sion to the Dutch Lutheran Church, and return thanks to Almighty 
God for crowning the allied arms of the United States and France 
with success, by the surrender of the whole British army under the 
command of the Earl Cornwallis." 

The day after that surrender. Gen. Washington issued an 
order, that " Divine service shall be performed to-morrow in the 
different brigades and divisions. The commander-in-chief 
recommends that all the troops that are not on duty do assist 
at it with serious deportment, and that sensibility of heart which 
the recollection of the surprising and particular interposition of 
Providence in our favor claims." 

" The auspicious event was commended to the whole nation 
as a subject of thankfulness in a proclamation which begins, 
' Whereas it has pleased Almighty God, the Father of mercies, 
remarkably to assist the United States of America,'" and con- 
tains this sentence : " Through the whole of the contest, from 
its first rise to this time, the influence of the Divine Providence 
may be clearly perceived in many signal instances, of which we 
mention but a few." 

An error it would be, we believe, to attribute the omission 
from the Constitution of the United States of the name of 
God to atheistic feeling, or intention to exclude mention of the 
Father of nations. It would, indeed, have been grateful and 



THEREFORE IN PUBLIC EDUCATION. 137 

graceful to have commenced the National Constitution, as did so 
many of the States, by some such expression as " With grati- 
tude to the Supreme Governor of nations," or the like. But 
the omission of this was not necessarily exclusive of God. We 
have sought in vain in the Federalist and in the Constitutional 
Debates for any evidence that the Divine Name was ruled out. 

The fathers of the republic had before them the arduous 
task, — a task so arduous and perplexing, that they well-nigh 
failed, — to set forth the political framework of the State in 
such a way as to represent fully the American idea, and, at the 
same time, to satisfy thirteen separate Colonies. That prob- 
lem seems, if you will glance at the debates, so to have ab- 
sorbed all their powers, that it appears not to have occurred to 
them to define or express the relation of the State to God. So 
some astronomer might have his mind so taxed with some ques- 
tion of the stars, that he might forget to say, " The heavens are 
telling God's glory." For all that, relieved from the problem, 
he may prove a devout man. 

It has been remarked as singular, that there is one book in 
the Bible which does not contain the name of God, — the Book 
of Esther. The interesting thought has been suggested in 
connection, that thus, by a suppression of his name, yet by the 
constant sense of him throughout, this book resembles nature. 
The writer of Esther was not an atheist. Had the divine 
name been in that book, we should not have grieved j but 
neither shall we petition to have it inserted. 

Neither were our ancestors atheists. The Pilgrims com- 
menced their compact, "In the name of God, Amen." "The 
charters of all the Colonies acknowledged God. The articles 
of the old Confederation acknowledged him. All the earliest 
constitutions of the States acknowledged him." The Declaration 
of Independence speaks of the "Creator," "the God of na- 
ture," and " appeals to the Supreme Judge of the world for the 
rectitude of their intentions," " with a firm reliance on the pro- 
tection of Divine Providence." Even the Constitution speaks 
of the Sabbath, requires the taking of an oath, and recognizes 
the rights of personal religion. Surely, in any true sense of 



138 GOD IN THE NATION ; 

the word, our Constitution is not atheistic. Undoubtedly the 
framers were absorbed by the mighty task of adequately em- 
bodying their new political ideas, and adjusting the unaccus- 
tomed relations of the branches of the government. Were the 
Constitution revised, we would insert some distinct recognition 
of God ; but we would not do it as a rebuke to the fathers, but 
rather to make their recognition df God distinct in the Constitu- 
tion as they made it elsewhere. " Sicut patribus, sit Deus no- 
bis." Yet, in reality, there is no more atheistic intent in the 
omission of God's name from the Constitution than in its omis- 
sion from the Book of Esther. 

" The recognition of the origin and continuity of the nation 
in God is repeated in the inaugurals of the first Presidents." 

President Jefferson, at the close of his inaugural, said, " I shall 
need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we all are ; 
who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their native land, and 
planted them in a country flowing in all the comforts and neces- 
saries of life ; who has covered our infancy with his providence, 
and our riper years with his wisdom and power ; and to whose 
goodness I ask you to join in supplications with me." Presi- 
dent Lincoln was equally recognizant of God in his state papers. 

President Grant's excellent proclamation for a Centennial 
Fourth-of-July service is worthy of citation here : " The founders 
of the government, at its birth and in its feebleness, invoked the 
blessings and protection of a Divine Providence ; and the thir- 
teen Colonies and three millions of people have expanded into 
a nation of strength and numbers commanding the position 
which then was demanded, and for which fervent prayers were 
then offered. It seems fitting, that, on the one hundredth anni- 
versary of our existence as a nation, a grateful acknowledgment 
should be made to Almighty God for the protection and the 
bounties which he has vouchsafed to our beloved country. I 
therefore invite the good people of the United States, on the ap- 
proaching fourth day of July, in addition to the usual observ- 
ances with which they are accustomed to greet the return of 
the day, further, in such manner and at such times as in their 
respective localities and religious associations may be most 



THEREFORE IN PUBLIC EDUCATION. 139 

convenient, to mark its recurrence by some public religious and 
devout thanksgiving to Almighty God for the blessings which 
have been bestowed upon us as a nation during the centenary 
of our existence, and humbly to invoke a continuation of his 
favor and of his protection." 

Daniel Webster, in his last address not political, delivered 
before the New- York Historical Society, concluded in these 
words : " And let me say, gentlemen, that if we and our pos- 
terity shall be true to the Christian religion ; if we and they 
shall live always in the fear of God, and shall respect his com- 
mandments j if we and they shall maintain just moral sentiments, 
and such conscientious convictions of duty as shall control the 
heart and life, — we may have the highest hopes of the future 
fortunes of our country : and if we maintain those institutions 
of government, and that political union exceeding all praise as 
much as it exceeds all former examples of political associations, 
we may be sure of one thing, — that, while our country furnishes 
materials for a thousand masters of the historic art, it will be no 
topic for a Gibbon ; it will have no decline and fall. It will go 
on prospering and to prosper. But if we and our posterity 
reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of 
eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and reck- 
lessly destroy the political Constitution which holds us together, 
no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us, 
that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity." 

Such was the feeling of the relation of God and righteousness 
to the nation in the mind of the great " Defender of the Con- 
stitution." 

We cannot forbear transcribing the grand supplication of 
Bishop Simpson at the opening of the Centennial Exhibition : 
"We beseech thee. Almighty Father, that our beloved republic 
may be strengthened in every element of true greatness, until 
her mission is accomplished by presenting to the world an illus- 
tration of the happiness of a free people, with a free church, in a 
free State, under laws of their own enactment, and under rulers 
of their own selection, acknowledging supreme allegiance only 
to the King of kings, and Lord of lords j and as thou didst give 



140 GOD IN THE NATION; 

to one of its illustrious sons first to draw experimentally the 
electric spark from heaven, which has since girdled the globe in 
the celestial whispers of 'Glory to God in the highest, peace on 
earth, and good-will to men,' so to latest time may the mission 
of America, under divine inspiration, be one of affection,, 
brotherhood, and love for all the race ; and may the coming cen- 
turies be filled with the glory of our Christian civilization!" 

But perhaps the most illustrious and striking example is that 
now to be recounted. It was the recognition of the Supreme 
Guidance, not by some sacerdotal orator, but by a calm philoso- 
pher, at a time, too, when even the birth of our nation was a 
matter of grave doubt and earnest solicitude. 

It was in the Constitutional Convention in 1787 that a diffi- 
cult question was presented as to the composition of the future 
Senate of the United States. The Constitution seemed about 
to be wrecked on this point. " There was much warm and 
some acrimonious feeling exhibited by a number of speakers : a 
rupture appeared almost inevitable ; and the bosom of Wash- 
ington seemed to labor with the most anxious solicitude for its 
issue." In this juncture Dr. Franklin arose, " the Mentor of 
our body." He moved an adjournment for three days to give 
time for calm reflection, and then proceeded in a speech which 
ought to be set in fair letters in our schoolrooms, which was 
one of the declamations of our younger years, and may well 
continue to be given to the youthful speakers, the future states- 
men of America : — 

" In this situation of the Assembly, groping, as it were, in the 
dark to find political truth, and scarce able to- distinguish it 
when presented to us, how has it happened, sir, that we have 
not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of 
lights to illuminate our understanding? In the beginning of 
the contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger, 
we had daily prayer in this room for the Divine Protection. Our 
prayers, sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. 
All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed 
frequent instances of a superintending Providence in our favor. 
To that kind Providence we owe this happy opportunity of con- 



THEREFORE IN PUBLIC EDUCATION. 141 

suiting in peace on the means of establishing our future national 
felicity. And have we forgotten that powerful Friend ? or do 
we imagine we no longer need his assistance ? I have lived, sir, 
a long time ; and, the longer I live, the more convincing proofs 
I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men. And, 
if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it 
probable that an empire can rise without his aid ? We have 
been assured, sir, in the Sacred Writings, that, ' except the Lord 
build the house, they labor in vain that build it.' I firmly be- 
lieve this j and I also believe, that, without his concurring aid, we 
shall succeed in this political building no better than the build- 
ers of Babel. I therefore beg leave to move, that henceforth 
prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings 
on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning 
before we proceed to business." 

This motion was seconded by Roger Sherman. 

It matters not whether, as some say, the motion was not put, 
for several reasons. This address stands, as recorded by Madi- 
son, as the profound impression of Franklin, the philosopher- 
statesman, of the dependence of our nation upon God. It also 
remains on record in the words of another eye-witness : " Never 
did I behold a countenance at once so dignified and delighted 
as was that of Washington at the close of his address." 

And, now, were these founders and these wise men wrong ? 
Were Washington and Franklin and Jefferson and Lincoln 
wrong, that a nation must confess God? Were Solon and 
Lycurgus, and Numa and Romulus and Demosthenes, and 
Cicero, Milton, and De Tocqueville, clear-sighted as to where 
lies the strength and safety of nations ? As Ruskin says on 
another theme, " I will only ask you to give its legitimate value 
to the testimony of these great men, consistent as you see it is 
on this head. Can it be supposed that these men, in the main 
work of their lives, are amusing themselves with a fictitious and 
idle view ? " 

Our syllogism stands completely argued, — God and his right- 
eousness are essential in the State ; The public school is the 
only preparation controlled by the State for citizenship and 



142 GOD IN THE NATION. 

Statesmanship : Therefore the public school should recognize 
God and his righteousness. 

Since writing the foregoing, I came upon this coincident 
sentence of Rev. Charles Brooks : " The maxim among the 
Prussians seems to be this, Whatever we would have in the 
State we must first introduce into the schoolroom.^' 

In what way this should be done is a problem which we dis- 
cuss — not here. That it should be done — done not timidly 
and questioningly, as now ; done in a more pronounced and 
understanding manner, more effectually and prominently than 
now — can hardly be denied by one who sees the lack of " God 
and his righteousness " in the State. "The First Prayer in 
Congress " would be a good picture to adorn the schoolroom, 
'' Washington at Prayer at Valley Forge," " The Departure 
from Delft Haven," and the " Pilgrims' Prayer on Landing." 
Some scheme for declaiming such addresses as that of Franklin, 
and of Corwin on Mexico, might be devised. I have been more 
solicitous to establish the principle than to show its practical 
working. But, beyond all other means, what can be better than 
for the youth of the republic, in the school preparatory to the 
State, to recognize the God of the nation by reverent prayer 
and selections from that book which makes prominent by pre- 
cept and example that " righteousness exalteth a nation," and 
of which Edward Everett said, that " all the distinctive features 
and superiority of our republican institutions are derived from 
the teachings of Scripture " ? 



MOTHER AND CHILD ; BIBLE AND 

SCHOOL. 



Ingratitude is not reckoned among the virtues. The viper 
stinging the befriending farmer is not fabled to us to excite to 
emulation. The " Ungrateful Guest," so branded by Philip of 
Macedon, is a stain on the -historic page. Towards one whose 
beneficence is still virent, fruitful, and blossoming for more 
fruit, ingratitude is especially odious. Basest of all is filial 
ingratitude. The bestowal of valuable life, the guarding and 
shaping of the early life, are the great boon, especially where 
only good was given in giving existence, ^neas bearing " Pater 
Anchises " from burning Troy, Cleobis and Biton in the harness 
drawing their mother to the temple, are admirable ; but Nero 
putting Agrippina to death is execrable. 

What if it should possibly be susceptible of demonstration, 
that for the school to eject the Bible is for child to thrust parent 
out of doors ? 

What is the relationship of Scripture and school ? Is not 
Orestes slaying his mother the most tragic of tragedies ? Did 
the Furies spare him, even though called Gracious Goddesses ? 
or CEdipus, though unwittingly he slew his father ? Faustulus 
knew Romulus and Remus not the offspring of the she-wolf, but 
was not wise enough to trace the twin-brothers to their royal 
ancestry ; but time revealed who gave them birth. 

There is reason to suspect, to begin with, kinship between 
Bible and school. Bunsen says, " A glance at the mental devel- 

'43 



144 MOTHER AND CHILD ; BIBLE AND SCHOOL. 

opment of humanity during the last eighteen centuries would 
compel us to assume the existence of some singularly exalted 
holy Personality as the cause, and not simply the occasion, of 
that revolution in man's view of the universe, the mightiest of 
all mental revolutions; being noless than the introduction of a 
new formation of life." By having the personality of Jesus 
Christ in it, " the Best," if no otherwise, the Bible is a vital 
book, influencing religious and mental life. 

Religion and intellect have connections. Mental philosophers 
have taken note of this. Religion — which makes and keeps the 
will divine in its choice, the conscience clear and unperturbed, 
makes hope serene, the eye docile and looking to the Highest, 
imparts lofty purpose, evolves hidden energies, the " faith which 
energizes by love " — must needs quicken intellect ; might even 
awaken a slumbering intellect. 

A common thing is the waking up of mind in and consequent 
on a religious experience. " To the Bible Spurgeon ascribes 
the discipline of his mental powers." "Once," he declares, 
"he put all his knowledge together in glorious confusion; but 
now he has a shelf in his head for every thing. ' Ever since I 
have known Christ, I have put Christ as my central sun ; and 
each secular science revolves around it.' He can learn any 
thing now ; and from his own experience he exhorts to build a 
studio and raise an observatory on Calvary." 

John Miiller, whom D' Aubigne calls the " prince of modern 
historians," writes to Charles Bonnet, " Ever since I knew the 
Saviour, I see all things clearly : with him there is no difficulty 
which I cannot solve." 

Emerson says, " If your eye is on the Eternal, your intellect 
will grow, and your opinions and actions will have a beauty 
which no learning or combined advantages of other men can 
rival." " Genius takes its rise out of the mountains of recti- 
tude." " People of superior moral quality are nearer to the 
secret of God than others ; are bathed by sweeter water : they 
hear voices, they see visions, where others are vacant. We 
believe that holiness confers a certain insight, because not by 
our private but by our public force can we share and know the 



MOTHER AND CHILD ; BIBLE AND SCHOOL. 145 

nature of things." Hamerton says, "The two most powerful 
mental stimulants — since they overcome even the fear of 
death — are unquestionably religion and patriotism : ardent 
states of feeling, both of them ; yet this ardor has great moral 
strength in all who have come to intellectual greatness." 

We are not surprised at "Bene orasse est bene studuisse," — 
" To have well prayed is to have well studied j " nor at the 
Frenchman's outburst, — 

" Nous ne voyons rien 
Sur terre on dans les cieux, 
Si nous ne nous mettons pas a genoux," — 
- " We see nought 
On earth or in heaven, 
Unless we put ourselves upon our knees." 

But enough to show that this connection is fully recognized 
between moral and intellectual. 

Further, now, the kinship is not a distant one. Modern 

EDUCATION IN EUROPE AND AMERICA IS THE CHILD OF THE 

Bible. This is the proposition which this paper is to prove 
and illustrate. The reader may be as much surprised as was 
the writer at the unanimity and amplitude of the evidence 
which shows that the Bible and school are parent and child. 

Modern education is in question. The schools of Greece 
and Rome, and the schools of the Arabians, which shed such 
splendor of learning, need not engage our attention, because, 
first, they are utterly perished, leaving not a vestige behind ; and, 
second^ because they are in no way the germ, or fountain, or 
even suggestion, of modern education ; and, third, because mod- 
ern education did not copy their forms and methods. They 
lacked " elements of immortality." Modern education, com- 
mencing with Christianity, receiving consistency under Charle- 
magne, bids fair to last the lifetime of the race. This educa- 
tion is the child of the Bible. 

The Chinese schools have been greatly the wonder of our 
scholars ; yet neither in method nor results can they be com- 
pared with ours. Moreover, — and this is the point now, — mod- 
ern Western education has derived nothing from them ; nor is 



146 MOTHER AND CHILD ; BIBLE AND SCHOOL. 

it likely to ingraft any of the peculiarities of Chinese method. 
On the contrary, Williams says,^ " The defects of the tuition 
here briefly described, extent, means, purposes, and results, are 
very great. Such, too, must unavoidably be the case until new 
principles and new information are infused into it. Consider- 
ing it in its best point of view, this system of education has 
effected all it can in enlarging the understanding, purifying the 
heart, and strengthening the minds, of the people ; but in none 
of these, nor in any of the essential points which a sound educa- 
tion aims at, has it accomplished half that is needed." 

This is illustrated, not to quote to a tedious length, by the 
fact that " no other branches of study are pursued than the 
classics and histories, and practice in composing. No arithme- 
tic, or any department of mathematics, nothing of the geography 
of their own or other countries, of natural philosophy, natural 
history, or scientific arts, nor study of other languages, are at- 
tended to." The schools are kept by private tutors. "There 
are no boarding-schools, nor any thing answering to infant- 
schools ; nor are public or charity schools established by govern- 
ment or by private benevolence for the education of the poor." 
There are no public female schools. " It is vain to expect that 
any change in the standing of females, or extent of their educa- 
tion, will take place, until influences from abroad are brought to 
bear upon them." * 

It will be sufliciently evident that not only does modern West- 
ern education owe nothing to China, but that China is one day 
to receive quickening influences from the education born of the 
Bible. 

The assertion that modern education is the child of the Bible 
is explained thus : It is not meant that unusual activity in the 
reading of God's word was always the occasion of schools. 
Rather this is meant : Education received its i7npulses from pious 
men^ meii foujided and grounded on the Bihle^ often, though not 
always, at periods of marked religious interest. Further: lest 
question should arise to obscure this conclusion, the piety of 
these men was scriptural rather than ecclesiastical ; since these 

^ Middle Kingdom, i. 434, 427, 431. 



MOTHER AND CHILD ; BIBLE AND SCHOOL. 147 

men were as numerous in Protestant as in Papal cliurches, in 
Dissenting as in Established churches. And, furthermore, peri- 
ods when the Bible has come into unusual prominence have 
been periods of revival of learning. Furthermore, on the other 
side, men who have not been under the influence of Scripture 
have not been prominent in modern education ; nor, with very- 
few exceptions, have they followed the spirit of modern educa- 
tion in building institutions of learning. 

" After the introduction of Christianity, and its accession to 
power,^ the duty of the authorities to educate the young was 
speedily recognized by the bishops and clergy. The object of 
this education was, of course, their training in the doctrines 
of Christianity ; but it was the recognition of the duty of giving 
instruction to the masses. In 800 a synod at Mentz ordered, 
that, in the parochial churches, priests should have schools in 
the towns and villages ; ' that the little children of the faithful 
should learn letters from them. Let them receive no remuner- 
ation from the schools.' " The Roman Government organized 
institutions of learning. Guizot says, " Roman Gaul was covered 
with large schools. The principal were those of Treves, Bor- 
deaux, Autun, Toulouse, Poitiers, Lyons, Narbonne, Aries, 
Marseilles, Vienne, Besangon, &c. Some were very ancient : 
those of Marseilles and Autun, for example, date from the first 
century.^ " All things in the fifth century attest the decay of the 
civil schools."^ "The intellectual aspect of Christian society 
was very different." ^ " The foundation of the greater portion 
of the large monasteries of the southern provinces belongs to 
the first half of the fifth century."^ Matthew Arnold says, 
" Then came the invasion of barbarians, and the break-up of 
the old order of things. For some time, schooling ceased to be 
a concern of lay society : it wejit on in the shelter of the 
Church, and for the benefit of the ecclesiastical body. The 
great schools, from the fourth century to the twelfth, are the 
monastery schools. There were four hundred monks studying 

1 American Encyclopsedia. 

2 Civilization in France, i 349. 

» Ibid., 52. * Ibid., 353. » Ibid., 354- 



148 MOTHER AND CHILD ; BIBLE AND SCHOOL. 

at St. Medard in the sixth century." Here is the transition 
from Roman education and the incoming of Christian education. 
Roman education had one method, - — that of self-appointed 
teachers, drawing to their place of instruction such as came 
voluntarily, such as were able to pay. This method is practi- 
cally obsolete, except in the case of the teachers of elocution, 
music, painting, gymnastics, penmanship, or some other spe- 
cialty. The modern educational institutions, all of them under 
some form of Christian civilization still extant, are the monastic 
school, the parochial school, the university, the endowed public 
school, and the free school. Every 07ie of these owes its origin, 
and, almost without exception, its separate establishments, to 
men under the influence of the Scriptures. This is evident, of 
course, in regard to all those vast schools which once held prin- 
cipal sway, — the parochial and monastic schools. The others 
— the university, the endowed school, the free school — require 
verification as to their origin. 

First, the University. Gladstone, in his " Inaugural," calls 
universities among the greater lights and glories of Christen- 
dom. " It is a fact," he says, " and, if so, it is a fact highly 
instructive and suggestive, that the university as such is a Chris- 
tian institution. The Greeks, indeed, had the very largest ideas 
upon the training of men, and produced specimens of our kind 
with gifts that have never been surpassed. But the nature of 
man, such as they knew it, was scarcely at all developed ; nay, 
it was maimed in its supreme capacity, in its relation to God." 
" Such a conception as that of the university was surely the 
appropriate ally of Christianit}^" " There is a fit association 
and a noble and lofty harmony between the greatest gift of the 
Almighty to our race, on the one hand, and the subordinate but 
momentous ministries of those chief institutions of learning and 
education." 

" The University of Paris," says Guizot, " was the first estab- 
lishment of its kind in Europe." An "imperial circular," issued 
by Charlemagne, " doubtless suggested by the learned Alcuin," 
did not remain without effect : it resulted in the re-establishment 
of systematic studies in the episcopal cities and in the great 



MOTHER AND CHILD; BIBLE AND SCHOOL. 149 

monasteries. From this epoch -date the majority of the schools, 
which soon afterward acquired such celebrity, and from which 
proceeded the most distinguished men of the following century. 
Alcuin was " the intellectual prime-minister " of Charlemagne. 
He had been the Archbishop of York, in England, in whose 
monastic school he had been instructed. Says Guizot, " Alcuin 
himself labored at a complete revisal of the sacred writings," 
and sent his work to Charlemagne as the most noble of gifts. 
He presided over a private school, the School of the Palace, 
from 787 to 796. This is believed to be the origin of the Paris 
University, which has been called " the first school of the 
Church." In the mediaeval times it took on its present form, 
and assumed great importance. " The great Middle Age 
University," says Arnold, " was the University of Paris." It 
received the lofty titles, — "Fountain of Knowledge," "Tree of 
Life," " Candlestick of the House of the Lord." 

Across the Channel, learning was revived by Alfred. Guizot 
informs us that the monasteries and schools of Ireland and 
England were flourishing ; that of York in England especially, 
whence came Alcuin. But learning had declined, until, south 
of the Thames, Alfred could not find a priest who could read 
his prayers in English, or translate a letter from Latin. Six 
Christian men, bishops and other ecclesiastics, helped the pious 
king to fan the dying flame, one of whom is particularly de- 
scribed as " most learned in the Holy Scriptures." Uncertain 
tradition ascribes the first English university to Alfred. Of 
Oxford., John Rous, an antiquary of the fifteenth century, 
affirms that Alfred " built in this town three halls in the name 
of the Holy Trinity." This is disputed by one, who, however, 
adds, " Soon after Alfred, schools of learning appear to have 
been established in Oxford j but these were either of a private 
character, or were attached to the religious houses with which 
the town abounded. It is certain that Oxford was a place of 
study in the reign of Edward the Confessor." 

Rapidly run the eye over the universities, observing their 
origination by men under the influence of the Bible. 

" It is probable that Cambridge first became a seat of educa- 



150 MOTHER AND CHILD ; BIBLE AND SCHOOL. 

tion in the seventh century, when, according to Bede, Siegbert, 
King of the East Angles, with the assistance of Bishop Felix, 
instituted in his kingdom a school for learning, in imitation of 
those which he had seen during his exile in France." 

Durham \N2iS at first "an academical institution, in connec- 
tion with the Cathedra] Church." 

London University's charter was "for the advancement of 
religion and morality, and the promotion of useful knowledge." 

St. Andrew'' s Uiiiversity originated (141 1) with Henry Ward- 
law, Bishop of St. Andrew's ;G^?<2i'^^ze/, thus : " In the year 1450, 
Pope Nicholas V., at the solicitation of William Turnbull, Bishop 
of Glasgow, issued a bull establishing a studium gejterale, or 
university for theology, the canon and civil law, the arts, and 
every other lawful faculty." 

Aberdeen (1494) was established by bull of Pope Alexander 
VI., on representation of James IV., "for teaching divinity, 
canon and civil law, medicine, and the liberal arts ; " Marischal, 
by Earl Marischal. Edinburgh has this history: In 1579 "the 
magistrates, encouraged by the ministers and other public-spirit- 
ed individuals in the city, commenced buildings. The chief 
promoter was James Lawson, the successor of Knox as minister 
of Edinburgh." 

Dublin University (1592) was built by Archbishop Loftus on 
the grounds of a dissolved monastery. 

Similar is the history of the universities of Germany and of 
Spain. So far, testimony is uniform that the originators of 
universities were men under Scripture influence. 

We shall see, in further study, how education with the course 
of empire " westward took its way," and that not only the 
universities of the New World, but new educational institu- 
tions born on our soil, sprang from the brain of men inspired 
bv the Bible. 

Coming to this side of the great water, our history is instruc- 
tive, and strikingly illustrative of the fact that modern educa- 
tion is the child of the Bible. One of the New-England fathers 
writes, " After God had carried us safe to New England, and 
we had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our liveli- 



MOTHER AND CHILD ; BIBLE AND SCHOOL. 151 

hood, reared convenient places for God's worship, and settled 
the civil government, one of the next things we longed for and 
looked after was to advance learning, and perpetuate it to 
posterity, dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches 
when the present ministers shall be in the dust." In 1638, 
only eighteen years after that one hundred and one landed 
in winter snows at Plymouth, — when Boston contained some 
twenty-five houses, and Massachusetts twenty-five towns, — Har- 
vard College was founded. Rev. John Harvard was its foster- 
parent, who bequeathed to it half his property. He was a 
dissenting clergyman^ " reverend," " godly," a " lover of learning." 
Rev. Henry Dunster was "patron and first president ; " Rev. 
Charles Chauncey the second president. President Quincy gener- 
ously acknowledges the work of our pious ancestry two hundred 
and fifty years ago : — 

" The Congregational clergy next demand our notice. To 
them this institution is perhaps more indebted than to any other 
class of men for early support, if not for existence. The power 
which they possessed they exerted for the college with zeal and 
affection. They promoted its interests by every instrumentality 
of authority, and every legitimate form of influence at their 
command. It was the constant topic of their sermons, and the 
constant object of their prayers. They were active for it in 
private, solicitous and urgent in public assemblies. Its founder 
was a member of their body. Those of them who had wealth 
contributed, according to their means, in money and books. 
Everywhere they were its unceasing and unwearied advocates. 
They identified its success with all the prospects and all the 
hopes of religion in the province. 

" Above all, we are probably indebted to the clergy for the 
catholic and liberal spirit breathed into the first and into each 
successive constitution, in every period its vital principle and 
distinguishing characteristic, to which may be chiefly ascribed 
its success and prosperity. 

"Dec. 27, 1643, a college seal was adopted, having, as at 
present, three open books on the field of an heraldic shield, 
with the motto Veritas inscribed. The books were probably 



152 MOTHER AND CHILD ; BIBLE AND SCHOOL. 

intended to represent the Bible, This was soon exchanged, 
' though without known authority,' for ' In Cliristi gloriam,' and 
* Christo et Ecclesiae.' " 

Yale College had an equally significant history. In 1700 ten 
of the principal ministers of the Colony met at New Haven, and 
associated themselves as trustees to erect and govern a college. 
They brought from their libraries forty volumes. Rev, Mr. 
Pierson was appointed rector. Similar to this is the religious 
origin of our other American colleges. Princeton was founded 
in 1746 by the Synod of New York, "for the purpose of supply- 
ing the Church with learned and able preachers of the Word." 
Brown University was started by Baptists of Philadelphia 
Association, at the instigation of Rev. Morgan Edwards, a 
distinguished Welsh clergyman of Philadelphia. 

Dartmouth "was originated (1769) in the warmest spirit, and 
established in the most elevated principles of Christian piety." 
It grew out of an Indian charity-school in Lebanon, Conn., in- 
structed by Rev. Eleazer Wheelock, D.D. Rev. Samson Occum 
(the Indian who wrote the hymn, " Awaked by Sinai's awful 
sound") and Rev. N. Whittaker raised for it ten thousand 
pounds in England. 

Dickinson College (1783) is Methodist, and Hampden- Sydney 
(1776) Presbyterian. Ndrth Caroli?ia had a minister for its first 
professor. Willia7ns (1793) had Rev. Ebenezer Fitch for first 
principal. Bowdoiii (1794) was started "at the petition of an 
association of ministers and county-court session." Union 
(1795) " derived its name from the co-operation of several reli- 
gious denominations in its organization." '''' Amherst ^^^ says 
Prof. W. S. Tyler, "grew out of a charity-school which was 
established for the education of indigent young men for the 
ministry and missionary work. It was born of the prayers, and 
baptized with the tears, of holy men. It was one of the earliest 
institutions which grew up under the influence of the foreign 
missionary enterprise, called ' Missionary Colleges.' " " Western 
Reserve College was founded by domestic missionaries to fur- 
nish pastors for the infant churches on the Reserve. Illinois 
College originated in two independent movements, — Home Mis- 



MOTHER AND CHILD ; BIBLE AND SCHOOL. 153 

sionary operations in Illinois, and a Missionary Society at Yale. 
The site of Wabash College was dedicated to God in prayer by 
its founders kneeling upon the snow in the primeval forest. 
Marietta was founded mainly to meet demands for competent 
teachers, and ministers of the gospel. In fact, nearly all of those 
institutions which have lived and prospered, and exerted a de- 
cided influence even in our literary and political history, were 
established by evangelical Christians, and have been taught, for 
the most part, by evangelical ministers." Prof. Tyler adds, 
" Institutions established by worldly men for mere worldly 
objects have not prospered. Infidelity has yet to make its 
first successful enterprise of this sort." To the same purport 
Dr. Edward N. Kirk says, " Infidelity can found colleges if it 
will ; but it rarely does, or in the world's history seldom if ever 
did. The experiment was tried in Virginia ; but the anti-Chris- 
tian feature of the university has, on experience both of its 
inefficiency and the public aversion to it, been removed. An 
infidel judge remarked to President Pierce," adds Dr. Kirk, 
" ' They made me a trustee of that college ; but I would not 
serve. I knew I should not attend faithfully to it ; and I do 
not know anybody but you ministers and Christians that will.' " 
And he adds further, " I believe it would be easy to bring this 
audience to tears by reciting what has been endured within ten 
years by the professors in Western colleges. Nothing has held 
them there but the love of Christ." 

Such is the history of universities, which originated in the 
Christian mind, and which, almost without exception, were 
established and sustained by men under the inspiration of the 
Bible. 

The history of Great Endowed Schools speaks exactly the 
same thing. The historian says, " To prevent the growth of 
Wickliffism, it had been made penal to put children to private 
teachers ; and the consequent excessive influx to only a few 
schools rendered, in 1477, grammar-learning so low, that several 
clergyme?2 of London petitioned Parliament for leave to set up 
schools in their respective churches in order to check semi- 
naries of illiterate men. Thus commenced grammar-schools, 



154 MOTHER AND CHILD ; BIBLE AND SCHOOL. 

properly so called." The history of the great schools of England 
verifies our proposition. Let us enumerate. Etoti^ " founded by 
the most pious but most unfortunate of English monarchs," 
Henry VI. Winchester, by William of Wykeham, of whom 
Froissart writes, " There was a priest about the kynge of Eng- 
londe, called Syr William Wycam, who was so great with the 
kynge, that all thynge were done by hym, and withoute hym was 
nothing done." Harrow, Merchant Taylors^ Charter House, 
are due to the general spirit of education fanned by religion ; 
Rugby, to Lawrence Sheriff, a " stanch Protestant." 

Westininster came from the grammar-school of the Monastery 
of St. Peter. St. Paufs was founded by John Colet, Dean of 
St. Paul's, in the time of Henry VII. " Its creation was solely 
due to the desire of a great scholar and an enlightened Christian 
for the diffusion of pure doctrines in religion and learning." 

To men and women acting under the same influence were 
due our American schools of the same character, as is seen in 
the origin of Dmnmer, Phillips, and Exeter Academies, and of 
Ipswich, Mt. Holyoke, Wheaton, Wellesley, Abbott, and Bradford 
Female Seminaries. The Western ladies' seminaries were 
founded by warm-hearted Christians. The very idea of female 
seminaries was conceived in the brain of a Christian minister, 
Rev. John Emerson of Byfield, preceptor of Mary Lyon. These 
seminaries, and others which we need not mention, were founded 
by men and women under Bible influence ; and the story of their 
origin is one of the most interesting pages in the history of 
Christian endeavor. 

And is the Common School, too, due to Christianity ? It 
is one of the plainest facts of history, though it is not so well 
known, or distinctly remembered among the people, as such a 
remarkable fact ought to be. Imperfectly and sporadically, the 
idea of education of children at public expense appears a few 
times in antiquity. " In Sparta, under the system of Lycurgus, 
the State undertook the education of the children ; but the in- 
struction imparted was mainly physical, and did not reach the 
peasant classes." Plato, it is said, in one passage, expresses 
an idea of public education as we understand it. Nowhere, 



MOTHER AND CHILD ; BIBLE AND SCHOOL. 155 

then, in antiquity, is public literary education found. "After 
the captivity, the Jews developed an excellent system of paro- 
chial schools in connection with the synagogues. In Rome, 
while private schools were numerous, the advantages accrued 
only to the patricians and such plebeians as possessed property." 
Germany, France, England, and the rest, had only universities, 
parochial, monastic, and endowed schools. A- great impulse 
was given to school education by the Reformation. In 1524 
Luther wrote his " Address to the Common Council of all the 
Large Cities of Germany in Behalf of Christian Schools." In 
1528, with the aid of Melancthon, he drew up the Saxon School 
System. In 1560 John Knox urged the necessity of schools 
for the poor, to be sustained at the charge of the kirk. 

Education was in like manner encouraged by Zwingle and 
Calvin. But this was not yet common-school ediicaiio7i. It 
was reserved for that new people, who, drinking directly from 
Scripture wells, made " a church without a bishop and a state 
without a king," who had grave sense of the necessity of the 
intelligent understanding of the Bible and equally grave sense 
of the duties of the State, to originate the common school. 

The American Encyclopsedia says, " The free public school, 
the common school of our time, was of New-England origin ; 
but whether it was fir^ established in Massachusetts or Con- 
necticut is a mooted question." Observable is the coinci- 
dence of the locality of the early common schools in the 
same States as the two universities, which were founded, a's we 
have seen, by religious men. Indeed, Prof. Tyler says, " The 
whole history of education in our country shows that colleges 
and common schools form different and essential parts of one 
and the same great system." Pres. Kingsley says, " The 
source of the wide-spread and incalculable benefit of popular 
education in America may be traced, without danger of error, 
to a few of the leading Puritans. If the early Pilgrims, more 
particularly of Massachusetts and Connecticut, had not strug- 
gled and toiled for this great object, and if they had not been 
immediately succeeded by men who had imbibed a large portion 
of their spirit, the school system of New England would not 
now exist." 



156 MOTHER AND CHILD ; BIBLE AND SCHOOL. 

Before the year 1650 the Colony of Massachusetts Bay made 
provision by law for the support of schools at the public ex- 
pense, for instruction in reading and writing, in every town con- 
taining fifty families ; and for the support of a grammar-school, 
to prepare young men for the university, in every town contain- 
ing one hundred families. The preamble of this school law 
shows how the Bible was the fountain of these schools : " It 
being one of the objects of Satan to keep men from the knowl- 
edge of the Scriptures, as in former times keeping them in un- 
known tongues; . . . therefore, to the end that learning may not 
be buried in the graves of our forefathers in church and com- 
monwealth, the Lord assisting our endeavors, it is ordered by 
this court that every township," &c. Almost simultaneously, 
whether before or after, a similar system sprang up in Con- 
necticut. 

That the common-school system may be plainly seen not to 
be due to Anglo-Saxon ideas, or to the spirit of that age, but 
only to a free Bible in a free State and in free minds, this inter- 
esting fact is adduced. In 1670, in answer to certain questions 
from England, the governor of Connecticut wrote, " One-fourth 
of the annual revenue is laid out in maintaining free schools." 
To the same question Gov. Berkeley of Virginia replied, " I 
thank God there are no free schools ^or printing, and I hope 
' we shall not have these hundred years." 

We quote only one more authority, — Chancellor Kent : 
" The interests of education had engaged the attention of the 
New-England colonists from the earliest settlement of the 
country ; and the system of common and grammar schools, and 
of academical and collegiate instruction, was interwoven with 
the primitive views and institutions of the Puritans. The 
word of God was at that time almost the sole object of their 
solicitude and studies. We meet with the system of common 
schools in the earliest of the colonial records. The system of 
free schools, sustained and enforced by law, has been attended 
with momentous results ; and it has communicated to the people 
of this State, and to every other part of New England in which 
the system has prevailed, the blessings of order and security to 
an extent never before surpassed in the annals of mankind." 



p 



MOTHER AND CHILD ; BIBLE AND SCHOOL. 157 

Thus modern education was born of the Bible. Not only 
the monastic and the parochial schools, but the university, the 
endowed school, the common school, are the work of men under 
the influence and inspiration of the Bible. Quod erat demon- 
stra7idnin. 

And, now, does it remain for the school of this ceptury, after 
the Bible has given birth to our education and nourished it, and 
given it new shapes for a thousand years, and it is potent and 
ample in its educational benefactions across a continent, 
and even to the fair isles of the Pacific, still virent, fruitful, 
and blossoming for more fruit, — does it remain for the school, 
which so proudly exhibits itself at the Centennial before the 
nations, to banish this benefactor by an ostracism of ingratitude ? 
Shall the College cut from its regnant place and from its con- 
spicuous escutcheon the volume Veritas 2 Shall the proud 
child, the Common School, thrust its parent, the Bible, into 
the street? Majestic and plaintive as when they first came 
from the imperial Caesar under the stab of the foster-son will 
the words be heard again, while this Imperial Volume suffers, but 
will not die, — ^^Et tu quoqice, Ml fili ? " — '' And thou, too, my 
SON ? " 



FREE AMERICA BORN OF THE BIBLE. 



That one of the Pilgrims, who on the memorable day of de- 
barkation, in December, 1620, stood with Plymouth Rock 
beneath his feet, and with the Bible which he had brought up 
from " The Mayflower's " cabin in his arms, expressed three 
great things : First^ the great continent beneath and before 
them, — the sea and the Old World left behind, — which was 
strong enough and rich enough to bear them up, and to become 
the homestead of a great nation ; second, the English race, 
thoughtful and sturdy enough to become a wise and vigorous 
people ; and, third, the English Bible, which contained the germs 
and principles of the civil and religious institutions which were 
to dominate on this continent. 

When young Edward VI. of England was crowned, and the 
three swords were brought to him as token of his being king 
of three kingdoms, he said there was yet one wanting. The 
noblemen around him inquired what that was. He answered, 
"The Bible." "That book," said the young prince, "is the 
sword of the Spirit, and to be preferred before these swords. 
That ought in all right to govern us, who use them for the peo- 
ple's safety by God's appointment. Without that word we are 
nothing, we can do nothing, we have no power : from that alone 
we obtain all power and virtue, grace and salvation, and what- 
soever we have of divine strength." "After some other similar 
expressions," adds the historian, " Edward commanded the sa- 
cred volume to be brought with reverence, and so carried 

before him." 
158 



FREE AMERICA BORN OF THE BIBLE. 159 

There were fifty issues of the Bible in bis short reign. 

In Madagascar, in 1868, was seen a sight marvellous to those 
who reflect, that, within the lifetime of most of those present, her 
jagged rocks had been sprinkled, almost poured, with the blood 
of martyrs. Ranavalona, — not the Cruel, but the Christian, — 
" preceded by a hundred ladies of rank, who walked before her 
palanquin, advanced across the plain, and ascended the richly- 
decorated platform. There, surrounded by the high officers of 
her court and kingdom, — for it was her coronation-day, — she 
took her seat beneath the canopy, on the front of which were 
inscribed in shining letters the Malagasy words, ' Glory be to 
God ; ' on the other sides, ' Good-will among men,' ' On earth 
peace,' ' God shall be with us.' On one hand of her Majesty 
stood a small table with the crown ; on the other hand a table, 
where, at a preceding coronation, had stood an idol^ but where 
now was seen the handsome Bible sent to her predecessor by 
the British and Foreign Bible Society." 

If, looking at these countries, which had — at least the former 
— emerged so gradually from barbarism that some might evade 
allowing the transforming power of this book in their history, 
we thrill as at the sight of a deed nobly done at the public 
acknoMdedgment by these monarchs of the paramount influence 
of the Scriptures on their nations, how much more should we 
think the public acknowledgment of this book — inspired or 
uninspired — right and comely in America, whose corner-stone 
was a Bible ! 

If these two island monarchs, sundered by two continents 
and by more than two centuries, set the Bible in honorable 
position before them, before their people, publicly on their coro- 
nation-day^ A FORTIORI should the Bible be set in some con- 
spicuous place of honor by the State in the American Republic. 
For the child, for the youth, that public place where the State 
should honor the book of her life and institutions is a special 
desk in the public school. Or will you thrill with a sense of the 
sublime fitness of things when these monarchs publicly own the 
secret of their greatness, yet look on as at a comely deed 
while that book — which, uninspired or inspired, is trans cendently 



l6o FREE AMERICA BORN OF THE BIBLE. 

the secret of oicr greatpess — is contemptuously swept from the 
pedestal where it stands in honor before American youth ? We 
believe history, that Plymouth Rock had a Bible on it: we 
know that American life and liberty has the Bible in it. 

The survey of modern education, from Charlemagne down to 
our time (Mother and Child, Bible and School), was neces- 
sarily exhaustive. To our readers conversant with American 
history, we need give only a brief presentation of a few out of 
many considerations to make the impression fresh and clear, 
that FREE America owes her life and her institutions to 
THE Bible. 

We present first, not those considerations which naturally 
occur first, but those which have already received mention and 
illustration in these papers. 

I. The American Sabbath, essential to our free insti- 
tutions, WAS DUE, IS DUE, TO THE BiBLE. 

However others received the septenary day of rest, we de- 
rived it from the Bible. For its continued beneficent observ- 
ance we are indebted to the invitation and command of the 
Bible, and the weekly ministrations from that book, which 
induce men to leave shop and home, and congregate in the 
place of worship. We are not claiming that the book is in- 
spired : our argument, being throughout 07i the ground of natural 
religion^ neither requires that nor permits that. The undeniable 
fact alone is averred, that our Sabbath is derived from the Bible, 
and that that Sabbath is essential to our national life. 

We need not at length repeat the proof that there is a vital 
connection between free institutions and the Sabbath. Still we 
will recall our witnesses, lest we should have forgotten the 
weight of their words. Pres. Hopkins, in his discourse on 
" The Sabbath and Free Institutions," maintains these proposi- 
tions : First, a religious observance of the Sabbath or the reli- 
gious Sabbath would secure the permanence of free institutions ; 
second, without the Sabbath religiously observed, the perma- 
nence of free institutions cannot be secured." Says another, 
'' He who has made the Sabbath for man has ordained the 
connection between the sacred day and that manliness which can 



\ 



FREE AMERICA BORIV OF THE BIBLE. i6l 

brook no bonds." One writes a report on the European Sab- 
bath, and calls his report " The Holy Day of Freedom and the 
Holiday of Despotism." A French writer says, " Why are the 
French people incapable of sustaining free institutions ? Be- 
cause they have no Sabbath." Pierre Duval exclaims, after a 
visit to America, and observation of our Sabbath, " I understand 
why this people is a great people. I know why for a centur}'- it 
has been free, — yea, the freest people which has been found. 
* Woe to America,' says one, ' if it ever ceases to keep holy the 
Lord's Day ! ' Yes, woe to America ! and woe then to liberty ! " 
Webster said, "The Sabbath school, as an institution, is 
priceless. It has done more to preserve our liberties than 
grave statesmen and armed soldiers." " There is not," says an 
eminent writer, " a single nation, possessed of a popular form of 
government, which has not our theory of the Sabbath. Protes- 
tant Switzerland, England, Scotland, and America cover the 
whole ground of popular freedom ; and in all these this idea 
of the Sabbath prevails with a distinctness about equal to the 
degree of liberty. Nor do I think the result an accidental one." 
We adduce now a new witness. Theodore Parker, who was not 
given to eulogizing the Bible, pays this tribute to the Sabbath : 
" Sunday, though enforced by superstition, has yet been the 
education-day of New England, the national school-time for the 
culture of man's highest powers : therein have the clergy been 
our educators, and done a vast service, which mankind will 
not soon forget." "But for that superstition, we might have 
had the same anarchy, the same unbridled license, in the seven- 
teenth century which we saw in the eighteenth." " How much 
farther English atrocities would have gone than the French 
did go, how long it would have taken mankind by their proper 
motion to re-ascend from a fall so adverse and so low, I cannot 
tell : I see what saved them from the plunge." " But without 
that Sunday, and without that preaching. New England would 
have been a quite different land, America another nation alto- 
gether, the world by no means so far advanced as now. New- 
England with her descendants have always been the superior 
portion of America." " She is superior in intellect, in morals ;. 



1 62 FREE AMERICA BORN OF THE BIBLE. 

that is too plain for proof. The prime cause of that superiority 
must be sought in the character of the fathers of New England ; 
but a secondary and most powerful cause is to be found also in 
those two institutions, — Sunday and Preaching." " The acorn 
is not more obviously the parent of the oak than those two in- 
stitutions of New England the parent of such masculine virtues 
as distinguish her sons." "Why is it that all great movements, 
from the American Revolution down to antislavery, have begun 
here ? Why is it that education societies, missionary societies, 
Bible societies, and all the movements for the advancement of 
mankind, begin here 1 Why, 'tis no more an accident than the 
rising of the tide. Once in a, week they paused from all work ; 
they thought of their God ; they listened to the words of able 
men exhorting them to justice, piety, and a heavenly walk with 
God ; they trembled at fear of hell ; they rejoiced at hope of 
heaven." 

To the Sabbath, therefore, to the Bible, free America, enlight- 
ened America, is due. Clark'' s Island., the observance of the first 
Pilgriiii Sabbath in America, is one spring which feeds our river 
of life as a nation. 

11. American education, essential to our free institu- 
tions, IS DUE to the Bible. 

It is so common a remark as to be trite, — it has been in the 
mouths of patriotic orators for more than a hundred years, — that 
education is essential to the maintenance of free institutions. 
But the education which led our fathers hither, which our fathers 
set in their polity as living spring of good citizenship and states- 
manship, was not only born of the Bible, but contained the Bible. 

All modern education — we need not repeat the long and 
massive array of facts — is the child of the Bible. The fathers 
of America were especially indebted to that education sprung 
from the Bible, in the two forms, the university and the endowed 
schools, and, we may add, the parochial schools. " The uni- 
versity," says Gladstone, " as such, is a Christian institution." 
The endowed schools also owed their suggestion and establish- 
ment only to men nourished by the Bible. These were the 
ischools — with the parochial, also due to the Bible — which 



FREE AMERICA BORN OF THE BIBLE. 163 

taught the Pilgrims to read the English Bible, and to compose 
the compact in the cabin of " The Mayflower." They estab- 
lished the same education here, born of the Bible, in the same 
forms, — the university and the endowed school. And here, on 
American soil, the religious origin of these institutions was, 
perhaps, even more marked than in the mother-country. Har- 
vard was founded and fostered by religious men ; Yale was 
due to ten ministers ; Dartmouth grew out of an Indian charity- 
school ; Wabash College was " dedicated to God in prayer by 
its founders kneeling upon the snow in the primeval forest." 
Dr. Kirk says, " Infidelity can found colleges if it will ; but it 
rarely does, or, in the world's history, seldom if ever did." Be- 
sides establishing universities and schools on the model handed 
down to them, education, in the minds of these men, religious 
and free, took the third form, — that of public free schools. We 
recall as worthy of repetition what was said in a previous paper. 
Pres. Kingsley says, " The source of the wide-spread and incal- 
culable benefit of popular education in America may be traced, 
without danger of error, to a few of the leading Puritans. If 
the early Pilgrims, more particularly of Massachusetts and 
Connecticut, had not struggled and toiled for this great object, 
and if they had not been immediately succeeded by men who 
had imbibed a large portion of their spirit, the school system of 
,New England would not now exist." Chancellor Kent's words 
are also memorable : " The institutions of education had en- 
gaged the attention of the New-England colonists from the 
earliest settlement of the country ; and the system of common 
and grammar schools, and of academic and collegiate instruc- 
tion, was interwoven with the primitive views and institutions 
of the Puritans. The word of God was at that time almost the 
sole object of their solicitude and studies. We meet with the 
system of common schools in the earliest of the colonial records. 
The system of free schools, sustained and enforced by law, has 
been attended with momentous results; and it has communicated 
to the people of this State, and to every other part of New Eng- 
land in which the system has prevailed, the blessings of order 
and security to an extent never before surpassed in the annals 
of mankind." 



164 FREE AMERICA BORN OF THE BIBLE. 

But not only did the education established by the fathers, 
which has enlightened America, come from the Bible : they set 
the Bible in that system of education. In the Ordinance of 
1787 they declared, " Religion, morality, and knowledge being 
necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, 
schools and the means of education shall be forever encouraged." 
Fifty million acres have been set apart for education. 

"In 1709 the town of Boston, on the report of a committee, 
voted, ' annually to appoint a certain number of gentlemen of 
liberal education, together with some of the reverend ministers 
of the town, to be inspectors of the schools ; ' ' and, at their 
visitation, one of the ministers, by turns, to pray with the 
schools, and entertain them with some instructions of piety 
espec^ially adapted to their age and education.' " ^ 

The system of education adopted by the town of Boston pre- 
scribed in the Latin School "The Greek Testament;" "the 
Bible to be read once a day by the first and second classes in 
course, excepting such parts as the masters may deem it best to 
omit j" "Beauties of the Bible ; " "that it be the indispensable 
duty of the several schoolmasters daily to commence the duties 
of their office by prayer, and reading a portion of the Sacred 
Scriptures, in the morning, and close the same in the evening 
with prayer." 

Pres. James Walker says, " In this college (Harvard), still 
purporting to be dedicated to Christ and the Church, the Greek 
New Testament was for more than a century the only text-book 
in the language." 

In this spirit the fathers set the Bible in the school ; and there, 
as their legacy, it continues at this day. 

To her education, therefore to the Bible, free America is due. 

Passing now to fresh considerations : — 

III. The Pilgrims and Puritans were men enlightened 
AND incited by THE BiBLE. We may acknowledge all the noble 
influences which have flowed from the other colonizations in 
America, — from New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, 
and the rest ; but no one can gainsay the fact that Plymouth 

1 Quincy's Boston. 



FREE AMERICA BORN OF THE BIBLE. 165 

Rock is the corner-stone of America. The institutions and 
principles, like the Thanksgiving, of New England, have passed 
beyond the narrow limits of a State, and are recognized as domi- 
nant in the whole land. The descendants of the Pilgrims, 
moving westward and southward, have carried and planted 
whatever institutions were their life and their pride. Dr. Chris- 
topher Gushing says,^ " Bancroft, in his History, first published 
in 1837, testified, that, at that recent date, the Puritans of New 
England were ' the parents of one-third of the whole white popu- 
lation of the United States.' " ^ Now, the Pilgrims and the 
Puritans were men of the Bible. So much were they men of 
the Bible, that they even established their commonwealth — 
unwisely as we now think — upon it. As Dr. Ellis and Joel 
Parker show, they planted here what these writers call a 
^''biblical commoiiwealthy They quote Cotton's words to Lord 
Say and Sele : "When a commonwealth hath liberty to mould 
its own frame, I conceive the Scripture hath given full direction 
for the right ordering of the same." And Davenport, in his 
life of Cotton, writes, " Considering that these plantations had 
liberty to mould their civil order into that form which they 
should find to be best for themselves, and that here the 
churches and commonwealth are complanted together in holy 
covenant and fellowship with God in Jesus Christ, Mr. Cotton 
did, at the request of the General Court in the Bay, draw an 
abstract of the laws of judgment delivered from God by Moses 
to the commonwealth of Israel, — so far forth as they are moral, 
that is, of perpetual and universal equity among all nations, — 
wherein he advised that theocracie, i.e., God's government, 
might be established as the best form of government, wherein 
the people that choose rulers are God's people in covenant with 
him." 

We see how completely the Bible and its ideas saturated the 
whole mind and heart of these men. But we are now consider- 
ing the nien^ and their characters as men, rather than their 
institutions. The vital moral forces of the Bible had penetrated 
them as deeply as we might argue that they would from the hold 

* Past Century of Congregationalism, 7. * i. 468. 



1 66 FREE AMERICA BORN OF THE BIBLE. 

, : i_™ 

the Bible ideas had gained upon them. Our greatest orators 
have spoken excellent words on the religious character of the 
Pilgrims, and its influence on the national character. Edward 
Everett, in his Plymouth oration, says, "Religious reformation 
was the original principle which kindled the zeal of our Pilgrim 
Fathers, as it has been so often acknowledged to be the main 
principle of the greatest movements of the modern world ; " 
and he speaks of " the first emigration to New England, from 
which, under a kind Providence, has flowed, not only the imme- 
diate success of the undertaking, but the astonishing train of 
consequences auspicious to the cause of liberty, humanity, and 
truth." Webster, in his memorable oration at Plymouth in 
1820, tells us, " The morning that beamed on the first night of 
their repose saw the Pilgrims already established in their coun- 
try. There were political institutions, and civil liberty, and 
religious worship." " They were politic, intelligent, and re- 
ligious men." " Who would wish for other emblazonry of his 
country's heraldry, or other ornaments of her genealogy, than to 
be able to say that her first existence was with intelligence, her 
first breath the aspirations of liberty, her first principle the truth 
of divine religion ?" "Finally, let us not forget," continues he, 
in the massive sentences of his peroration, " the religious char- 
acter of our origin. Our fathers were brought hither by their 
high veneration for the Christian religion. They journeyed by 
its light, and labored in its hope. They sought to incorporate 
its principles with the elements of their society, and to dif- 
fuse its influence through all their institutions, civil, political, 
or literary. Let us cherish these sentiments, and extend their 
influence still more widely, in the full conviction that that is the 
happiest society which partakes in the highest degree of the 
mild and peaceable spirit of Christianity." 

To the Pilgrims, therefore to the Bible, free America is due. 
The Pilgrims made a free America : the Bible made the Pil- 
grims. " Banish the Bible from the public schools of America ! " 
indignantly exclaimed Rufus Choate. " Never, so long as there 
is a piece of Plymouth Rock big enough to make a gun-flint ! " 

Monstrous would it be to prohibit in public schools the 



FREE AMERICA BORN OF THE BIBLE. 167 

story of the Pilgrims, of William Penn and George Calvert, 
since they are our nation's founders. Monstrous it is to interdict 
the Bible, since free America was born of the Bible. 

The proofs accumulate. 

IV. The separation of Church and State, which is one 
OF the marked advantages of our political system, is due 
TO the Bible. 

The Bible, indeed, contains the spectacle of a theocracy ; but 
that, be it observed, properly understood, is not a state in which 
the priesthood controls the government, nor even in which the 
Church controls the government, but in which God controls it. 
In Israel, as a general truth, God did not raise the " judges," or 
presidents, from the sacerdotal order. The mode of Israel's 
theocracy implies, indeed, the natural freedom of the State, 
since the theocracy was always felt to be, not a universal thing, 
but the peculiarity of Israel. Whoever, therefore, is impressed 
with the idea deepest in Israel's government, must believe in the 
natural separation of the State, not only from the sacerdotal 
order, but even from the theocratical government of God. The 
theocracy was accepted by Israel at Sinai, when, hy plebiscite, 
they chose their Deliverer as their King. " It is never to be for- 
gotten," said Wines, "that although God, by what he wrought 
for the Israelites, had acquired all the right to be their Sover- 
eign that any man could possibly have, he still neither claimed 
nor exercised the right in an arbitrary and despotic way. 
Moses, by his direction, permitted the people freely to choose 
whether they would accept Jehovah as their King, and obey the 
laws which he might give them. When they had formally 
assented to this, God was considered as their King, but not 
before." Wines dwells on this. 

Now, in this chosen theocracy, there is not " Church and 
State " in the modern sense, but the contrary, — a recognition 
of the moral freedom of the State in general. The Bible, then, 
really implies the separation of Church and State. True, the 
Puritans did not see this ; but, with an open Bible, they would 
have come to see it. 

Parkinson says of the Puritans, " Even to have half acquired 



1 68 FREE AMERICA BORN OF THE BIBLE. 

the lesson was to be in advance of their times, and prepared 
them for a further development of their principles."^ 

Mitchell says, "The full history of toleration is yet to be 
written;"^ and he refers to Lord Bacon's letter to Cecil, ad- 
vising the toleration of the Irish Papists, and to a volume ap- 
pearing before 1606, in which the argument of the "Tares" is 
used, and these words : " If Christ will have it thus, why do you 
blame my advice that a Christian king should do the same, 
rather than use the sword of force and violence upon the like 
occasions ? " But, notwithstanding these and other sporadic 
utterances, such as William Blackstone's " I did not flee from 
the lord bishops to obey the lord brethren ; " and notwithstand- 
ing Cotton's assertion, that others besides the one thought 
Church and State should be separate, — the honor must be con- 
ceded to that one, Roger Williams, of having distinctly and 
broadly enunciated the doctrine of separation of Church and 
State, and of having incorporated that idea into a constitution, 
that of Rhode Island. That is now the American doctrine 
everywhere. To it is due much of the success of our political 
system. Gervinus, Uhden, and Bancroft in his noble tribute, 
ascribe this revolution to Roger Williams. But Roger Williams 
was a minister; and, further, he built his political doctrine on 
the Bible. "Christ Jesus," says he, "is the deepest politician 
that ever was ; and yet he commands the toleration of anti- 
Christians." The parable of the " Tares " is a favorite argu- 
ment with him. " It pleased not the Lord Jesus, in the first 
institution of his Church, to furnish himself with any such civil 
governments as unto whom he might commit the care of wor- 
ship." 

So America owes the separation of Church and State, her 
safety and her pride, to the Bible. 

V. The ideas of democracy and republican liberty in 
America are due to the Bible. 

Tocqueville must needs name his volume of thoughts on our 
country by the central idea of our institutions, " Democracy in 
America." " America," says he, " is the most democratic coun- 

1 State Churches, 245. 2 Westminster Assembly Minutes. 



FREE AMERICA BORN OF THE BIBLE. 169 



try in the world." That democracy came from the Bible. 
During centuries, the old English spirit, in a select part of her 
people, was nourished, from Wycliffe down, by Bible-truths. 
" When we speak," says Phelps, " of the sway of European and 
American mind, we speak of the conquests of the Scriptures. 
The elemental ideas of the Bible lie at the foundation of 
the whole of it." " In English form the Bible stands at the 
head of the streams of English conquests and of English and 
American colonization and commerce." The Puritans, the 
most assiduous readers of this book, imbibed to the greatest 
degree the principles of liberty. Hume emphatically acknowl- 
edges the indebtedness of English liberty to these Bible-read- 
ers. " So absolute was the authority of the crown, that the 
precious spark of liberty had been kindled by the Puritans 
alone ; and it was to this sect that the English owe the free- 
dom of their constitution." Hallam calls them the " deposita- 
ries of the sacred fire." It is not difficult to see whence they 
derived this principle. The internal management of the the- 
ocracy of Israel was essentially that of a commonwealth. 
Wines has abundantly displayed this in " Hebrew Common- 
wealth." Religion always gives man the idea of his personal 
value. Christ made his church a theocracy as regards himself, 
a democracy as regards each other. " All ye are brethren," 
"Tell it to the Church," is the principle of democracy. King 
James saw by intuition the drift of Puritan doctrines. To 
Reynolds he said, " No bishop : why, then, no king." Had 
Christ'' s order in the Church been carried out for five centuries^ 
Europe would have been republican the other thirteen, and have 
avoided regal tyrannies, and wars due to royal caprice and am- 
bition. 

The New-England town-meeting was modelled after the New- 
England church-meeting. Otis and Warren learned free speech 
and the rights of legislative assemblies in the town-meeting and 
the church-meeting. Phelps says, " History has learned to 
recognize the founders of New England among the civilizing 
powers of the world. This power is for the most part latent, 
like the forces of Nature. It has been working now for two 



170 FREE AMERICA BORN OF THE BIBLE. 

centuries and more ; yet to-day it is going on with its creations, 
giving birth to states, fashioning institutions, breathing life into 
nations, with the same unconcern of its own majesty which 
belongs to gravitation." " ^Democracy is Christ^ s governments^ " 
he says, "was the theme of a pamphlet by a humble pastor of 
Massachusetts in 1687, which, nearly one hundred years later, 
on the eve of our Revolution, was republished as a political 
document becoming to the times." Jefferson, it is said, learned 
the democratic idea from observing the manner of proceeding 
in a little country church in Virginia. 

To the democratic idea, therefore to the Bible, is due free 
America. 

VI. The ardent spirit of the Revolution, which made 

us AN INDEPENDENT NATION, WAS DUE TO THE BiBLE. Tllis 

is apparent to the thoughtful reader in perusing such a book 
as Magoon's "Orators of the Revolution." Otis's "Vindica- 
tion of Boston" appeared in 1762. "Your opposition pre- 
ceded ours," writes Jefferson. Otis was born on the shores of 
Massachusetts Bay, and was descended, on his mother's side, 
from those who came in "The Mayflower." Samuel Adams is 
called "the last of the Puritans," "a class of men to whom," 
says Everett, " the cause of civil and religious liberty on both 
sides of the Atlantic is mainly indebted for the great progress 
which it has made for the last two hundred years ; and, when 
the Declaration of Independence was signed, that dispensation 
might be considered as brought to a close. At a time when the 
new order of things was inducing laxity of manners, Samuel 
Adams clung with greater tenacity to the wholesome discipline 
of the fathers. His only relaxation from the business and cares 
of life was in the indulgence of a taste for sacred music, for 
which he was qualified by the possession of a most angelic 
voice, and a soul solemnly impressed with religious sentiments. 
Resistance to oppression was his vocation." " It is significant 
that he prepared himself for the ministry." "He must be re- 
garded as the great leader of our Revolution." He made " the 
first public denial of the right of the British Parliament to tax 
the Colonies without their consent, the first denial of parlia- 



FREE AMERICA BORN OF THE BIBLE. 171 



mentary supremacy, and the first public suggestion of a union 
on the part of the Colonies to protect themselves." Whatever 
credit is due to others, it is to be remembered that Gordon de- 
clared — truly, no doubt — that "Mr. Samuel Adams has long 
since said, in small confidential companies, ' This country shall 
be independent, and we will be satisfied with nothing short of 
it.' " 

John Adams, too, was of Puritan descent, of whom Jefferson 
wrote, " The great pillar of support to the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence was John Adams. He was the colossus of that Con- 
gress." 

'•'The meeting-house, the school-house, and the training- 
field," said he, " are the scenes where New-England men were 
formed." 

Besides this, the patriot preachers of the Revolution were 
among the foremost leaders. Says Phillips, " In those days, 
Adams and Otis, advocates of the newest and extremest liberty, 
found their sturdiest allies in the pulpit. Our Revolution was 
so much a crusade, that the Church led the van." The Old 
South Church, loved by patriots, hated and feared by Great 
Britain, honored by Edmund Burke, was one of the great nurse- 
ries of the Revolution. "Here," says the eloquent Phillips, 
" the fit successors of Knox and Hugh Peters consecrated the 
pulpits with the defence of that doctrine of the freedom and 
sacredness of man which the State borrowed so directly from 
the Christian Church." " Here Samuel Adams, the ablest and 
ripest statesman God gave to the epoch, forecast those meas- 
ures which welded thirteen colonies into one thunderbolt, and 
launched it at George the Third." "The State House," says 
Dr. Manning, " and this sanctuary, have been called the Moses 
and Aaron of New-England freemen." 

" Perhaps no livelier illustration of this common conviction of 
the vital connection which was felt at that time to exist between 
politics and religion could be furnished than is given in an 
incident which happened just before June 14, 1774. Dr. Byles 
succeeded in creating a real panic among the British troops by 
reporting, that, on June 14, forty thousand men would rise up in 



172 FREE AMERICA BORN OF THE BIBLE. 

opposition to them, with the clergy at their head j the fact being, 
that that day had been appointed as a day of fasting throughout 
the province. It was wisdom, as well as wit." "In that day, 
in this province, it meant in all literalness an army of twoscore 
thousand men headed by their clergy, and animated by the dan- 
gerous resolution to defend their liberties." ^ 

"That great word of independence," says Everett, "which, if 
first uttered in 1776, was most auspiciously anticipated in 1620, 
means much more than a mere absence of foreign jurisdiction. 
I could almost say, that, if it rested there, it would scarcely be 
worth asserting. In every noble, in every true acceptation, it 
implies not only an American government, but an American 
character, an American feeling." 

The evidence will warrant us in saying with something of 
positiveness, that, 

VII. The union of these States is due to the Bible. 
We are not prepared to say how far the early colonists had 
forecast the future of the continent; though we do not forget in 
1643 the United Colonies of New Efigtand, of which one says, 
"That was the sapling, the United States are the tree;" nor 
how far they had forecast the future of the continent, and 
discerned by what vinculum the Colonies would eventually be 
bound. The necessities of common defence and common weal, 
probably, rather than any ideal of confederation, led them to 
their first unions. Yet these Bible-readers had in the Book the 
very model of our government, as has been beautifully de- 
scribed,^ in the twelve united — not confederate, but united — 
tribes of Israel. " The God of our fathers has divided us, ac- 
cording to his own primeval idea of beauty and glory, as mani- 
fested in his own Israel, into states." " Pleiades among the 
nations, land of commonwealths ! " That ideal was in the 
mind of New England, latent, if not produced, waiting only for 
events to bring it out into distinct consciousness. 

"On a Sabbath morning, — the 8th of June, 1766," — says 
Prof. Phelps, "when the old charter of Massachusetts was in 

1 Mather Byles to Thomas Starr King : Rev. George L. Chaney. 

2 N. Adams, D.D. : Our Family of States. 



FREE AMERICA BORN OF THE BIBLE. 173 

peril, Jonathan Mayhew, pastor of the West Church in Boston, 
hallowed his last day of health in that city by writing to James 
Otis, ' You have heard of the communion of churches. While I 
was thinking of this in my bed, the great use and importance of 
a communion of colonies appeared to me in a strong light, 
which led me immediately to set down these hints to transmit to 
you.' That was the germ," says Phelps, "from which sprang 
the union of these States." 

This idea thus cast by this Boston pastor into patriot minds 
did not die. In an emergency of the Colony, six years later, 
Nov. 2, 1772, on motion of Samuel Adams, a committee of cor- 
respondence was chosen " to state the rights of the colonists, as 
men, as Christians, as subjects." This committee was instructed 
to correspond with all the Colonies on the subject of their 
rights. " Out of this original committee of correspondence," 
says Magoon, "grew the union of the Colonies and the Con- 
gress of the United States." If it be true, then, as Tocqueville 
said, that "the maintenance of the existing institutions of the 
several States depends in part upon the maintenance of the 
Union itself ; " and as Webster said in his reply to Hayne, that 
" to that Union we owe whatever makes us prosperous at home 
and respectable abroad ; " and if that Union is due to the 
thought of a Christian pastor meditating the analogy of the com- 
munion of churches with the possible union of the colonies, and 
to the energy of a Christian statesman, — free America, in its 
present united and prosperous condition, is due to the Bible. 

VIII.' Not the original corner-stone alone, — the early 
Colonies, — but as well the line of new States from the 
Alleghanies to the Pacific, the long colonnade of 

MASSIVE and beautiful PILLARS ON WHICH THE ARCHITRAVE 
OF THE NATIONAL TEMPLE REPOSES, HAD THEIR ORIGIN AND 
STRENGTH FROM THE BiBLE. 

De Tocqueville's observation shows that this fact struck his 
open and discerning mind, — that the Atlantic States were mak- 
ing the new States to the westward. " I have known of socie- 
ties," he observes, "formed by the Americans, to send out mis- 
sionaries of the gospel into the North-western States to found 



174 FREE AMERICA BORN OF THE BIBLE. 

schools and churches there, lest religion should be suffered to 
die away in those remote settlements, and the rising States be 
less fitted to enjoy free institutions than the people from whom 
they came." " Thus religious zeal is perpetually "vvarmed in the 
United States by the fires of patriotism." " They will tell you 
that all the American republics are collectively involved with 
each other : if the republics of the West were to fall into anar- 
chy^ or to be mastered by a despot, the republican institutions 
which now flourish upon the shores of the Atlantic Ocean 
would be in great peril. It is, therefore, our interest that the 
new States should be religious in order to permit us to remain 
free." 

Tocqueville here is only discerning what had early been the 
policy of the new nation, — to quarry the ever-lengthening line 
of columns from the same granite quarries from which the 
corner-stone had been taken. 

Such emigrations, indeed, from the East, as were prompted 
by no special religious purpose, carried with them religious 
institutions. The first emigration to the North-west Territory 
was, we believe, that called the Marietta Colony, led by Gen. 
Putnam, which, in 1788, sailed down the Ohio in a vessel which 
they had built, and significantly named " The Mayflower," and 
landed on the Muskingum River. They were " principally 
descendants of the Puritan fathers." "They retained a portion 
of the good old customs and steady habits of their Pilgrim 
ancestors, and also of their veneration for the institutions of 
religion, literature, and morality. Hence it was, that, "as soon 
as they had provided for shelter for themselves and their fami- 
lies, they directed their attention to the erection of a church. 
A school was also organized at the same time. These were the 
first institutions of the kind got up within the North-west Ter- 
ritory."^ This was New England transplanted. Rev. Marcus 
Whitman saved Oregon to the United States. But direct 
efforts on a large scale were made to plant religion and educa- 
tion in the West and South. What else mean these time- 
honored names, — " Home Missionary Society," " Societv for 

* Burnet: Early Settlement of N6rth-west Territory. 



FREE AMERICA BORN OF THE BIBLE. 175 

Collegiate Education," " American Missionary Association " ? 
Great men have not undervalued that great empire growing up 
beyond the Mississippi. In 1835 Lyman Beecher made his 
" Plea for the West," of which it is said significantly, " It was 
delivered in several of the Atlantic cities." "The West," said 
he, " is a young empire of mind and power and wealth and free 
institutions, rushing up to a giant with a rapidity and a power 
never before witnessed below the sun ; and, if she carries with 
her the elements of her preservation, the experiment will be 
glorious, the joy of the nation, the joy of the whole earth, as 
she rises in the majesty of her intelligence and benevolence 
and enterprise for the emancipation of the world." 

A Christian layman, in 1842, wrote, " I feel a strong persua- 
sion that this country (the West) some time hereafter will be the 
main support, reliance, and life of our government, or it will be 
its poison, destruction, and death. If knowledge, virtue, justice, 
temperance, righteousness, and all sound moral and religious 
principles, abound and increase with the increase of the country, 
it will, almost beyond the possibility of a doubt, permanently 
strengthen, support, enrich, and ennoble our government, pro- 
mote the prosperity and happiness of the whole people, and dif- 
fuse blessings over our whole country and the world ; but, if this 
is not the case, . . . then this great country will become a curse 
instead of a blessing." 

This apprehension, this hope, have excited commensurate 
efforts. " There have been three great efforts made to supply 
the whole population of the United States with Bibles, which 
were inaugurated in 1829, 1856, 1866," in the last of which 
nearly five and one-half millions of families were visited. Malt- 
by, in 1825, arguing for a National Home Missionary Society, 
says, "A system aiming not at itinerant missionaries alo?ie., but 
at planting in every little community that is rising up men of 
learning and influence to impress their own character on those 
communities, — a system, in short, which shall gather up the 
resources of philanthropy, patriotism, and Christian sympathy, 
throughout our country, into one vast reservoir, from which a 
stream shall flow to Georgia, to Louisiana, to Mississippi, and to 



176 FREE AMERICA BORN OF THE BIBLE. 



Maine." This was a mighty plan. In 1873 six million five 
hundred thousand dollars had been disbursed in the West. 

Bushnell said, in remarking the effects of these efforts, even 
in 1847, " I^ was religion, dispensed by missionary societies, 
which finally turned the crises of Vermont, Western New York, 
and Eastern Ohio." "A society now hovering over Michigan, 
Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, and other regions beyond." 
From that great city of the West, Chicago, twenty-four years 
later, Bartlett points out the whitening harvest of these efforts : 
"Why should I cite De Tocqueville to show that her principles 
'have involved the whole confederacy,' or 'The Evening Post' 
to prove that the descendants of those ' forefathers are clearly 
the dominant power in the United States ' ? Why tell again 
the story, of those who planted the church, the school, and the 
college in Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and the 
Pacific slope ? How trace the great silent forces carried West 
by Theron Baldwin and his noble comrades forty years ago ? 
Why repeat the tale of the Andover Band in Iowa ? Why tell 
of the Dartmouth graduates who preached the gospel first in 
Buffalo, Marietta, and Western Reserve ? of the thirty Yale- 
Seminary ministers in Ohio, and the forty in Illinois ? This 
society has planted more than five-sixths of the Presbyterian 
and Congregational churches in the great Western States, which 
sent one-fourth of their male population to the war." "The 
Home Missionary Society has become an eminent historical 
power ; a plastic organic force in the genesis of new empires ; 
the most effective factors of Christian civilization, order, and 
life, in new States of imperial vastness and aspirations which 
have sprung up along the march of our nation from ocean to 
ocean." 

Of course we fail in any brief space to speak fittingly of the 
great movements which have carried westward and southward 
civilization, religion, education. The Presbyterian, the Mora- 
vian, and the Episcopalian have had their share in the work. 
No one can fail to observe the immense influence of Methodism 
in forming the character of the South and West. " Methodism, 
with its 'lay preaching' and its 'itineracy,' could alone afford 



FREE AMERICA BORN OF THE BIBLE. 177 

the ministrations of religion to the overflowing population : it 
was to lay the moral foundations of many of the great States of 
the West." ^ Baird writes, " We recognize in the Methodist econ- 
omy, as well as in the zeal, the devoted piety, and the efficiency 
of its ministry, one of the most powerful elements in the re- 
ligious prosperity of the United States, as w^ell as one of the 
firmest pillars of their civil and political institutions."^ "The 
historian of the republic says that it has ' welcomed the 
members of Wesley's society as the pioneers of religion ; ' that 
' the breath of life has wafted their messages to the masses of 
the people, encouraged them to collect the white and the negro, 
slave and master, in the greenwood, for counsel on divine love, 
and the full assurance of grace ; and carried their consolation 
and songs and prayers to the farthest cabins in the wilder- 
ness.'"^ 

In our day, it is still men of the Bible.^ as represented in such 
societies as the American Missionary Association (incorporated 
1849), which have taken upon them the task of moulding three 
millions and a half of freed slaves into Christian citizens, and 
to exercise like religious influence upon the thousands of 
strangers from the land of Confucius and upon the tribes of the 
red men. It was Gen. O. O. Howard, " the Christian man, the 
indefatigable worker, and the impartial friend of white and 
black," who was chosen chief commissioner of the Freedmen's 
Bureau (1865). 

The West, religious and free, is essential to free America : 
therefore free America is due to the Bible. 

The final consideration which we adduce is, that, 

IX. The great religious and moral movements in Amer- 
ica, BORN OF the Bible, have been the conserving force in 
THE American nation. They have been what salt and mo- 
tion are to the sea, — its preservators. This is a theme little 
pondered ; but these great movements, with all their faults, 
are worthy not only of respectful study by the statesman, but 
also of his frank acknowledgment. Who shall estimate the in- 

1 Stevens : History American Methodism, 18. 

2 Religion in America. ^ Bancroft, 7, 261. 



fjS FREE AMERICA BORN OF THE BIBLE. 

fluence upon America of about twenty-five of her clergy ? We 
do not speak of their spiritual, but their moral work, — renova- 
tions of individuals and communities, which are matters, not of 
ecclesiastical computation, but of common observation. Ben- 
jamin Franklin was led to dedicate himself " to a perpetual 
effort to do good in the world " by reading Cotton Mather's 
" Answering the Great End of Life." Many a New-England 
man learned his antislavery doctrines at the feet of Dr. Chan- 
ning, who wrote as early as 1835 against slavery, and in 1837 
headed the petition for the use of Faneuil Hall for that stormy 
meeting where Wendell Phillips commenced his career of agi- 
tation. Jonathan Edwards, Dr. Dwight, Emmons, Nettleton, 
Finney, Edward Payson, Lyman Beecher, Bushnell, Wayland, 
Channing, many eminent presidents of colleges and seminaries, 
not to speak of the eminent living, — men like these are essen- 
tial to America as we have it. They were charged with vital 
and saving forces. They awakened and formed, at every period 
of our history, the young men who have been our statesmen 
and educators. Dr. Dwight was a bulwark against the spirit 
of the French illuminati, which might have given us a French 
revolution. Lyman Beecher's '^ Six Sermons on Intemper- 
ance " were the unsealing of the fountain of American temper- 
ance. To Finney and Oberlin we owe a tidal wave of anti- 
slavery influence. Some of these men understood the relation 
of great religious movements to the future of their country. 
Finney speaks in 183 1 of the conversion of a hundred thou- 
sand, and of larger numbers since, and makes us aware how 
much that number of morally-renewed men can affect a nation. 
And, when the simplicity of our ancestors had passed away, 
could any thing have resisted corruption, and kept us from 
moral decay and destruction, but these great tides of holy in- 
fluence which have come with the preaching of the Bible ? " In 
1801 there was one professed Christian for ten inhabitants, in 
1834 one for seven, in 1843 one for five and a half, in 1850 
one for four and a half, in i860 one for four and a quarter." 
" Commimicants have increased more than fourteen-fold." 
" Church-membership has increased two and one-half times 



FREE AMERICA BORN OF THE BIBLE. 179 

faster than the population."^ Now, if, for " salt without savor," 
you reckon, even unreasonably, as, for instance, the extreme pro- 
portion of one-half, still who can estimate the influence of one 
renewed man in every eight ? — five million men, women, and 
children, who profess to owe the commencement and sustaining 
of their moral life to the Bible. Is it too much to suppose that 
these five million people, — to reckon them so few, — morally 
renewed, may have been, must have been, in the various crises 
of our history, sails, ballast, rudder, which have kept our na- 
tion and the " Ship of State " from wreck ? Yet these five mil- 
lioJi profess that they were morally renewed by the Bible. 

Who shall estimate the vitalizing and conserving influence 
upon American life and character of the work of Dwight L. 
Moody, who has not only stirred up thousands to a renewed 
life, but who has so put before our great cities — Chicago, 
Boston, Philadelphia, New York — the thought of honest, manly 
living and dealing, that business-men remark, as one said to 
me, " In Boston, a pound is sixteen ounces nearly everywhere 
to-day." 

"There never, was an age, and never a city or state," says 
Hedge, " in which moral corruption was not too rife. In such 
as survive the ever-threatening jdestruction and death, it is the 
more prevailing virtue of the few which overcomes the abound- 
ing vice of the many, and rights at last the sinking world. In 
every age, those ' ten righteous ' have been the saviors of their 
time. They have served it with their excellent works and the 
more excellent beauty of their lives. Without ostensibly com- 
bining for that end, with no visible conspiracy, without art or 
device, or shrewd organization, or policy, or plot, by being 
what they are, and living what they are from the heart of faith, 
by walking uprightly, doing justice, and loving mercy, in their 
several spheres, with the still conservatism and counter-attrac- 
tions of miraculous goodness, they have kept the world from 
going to pieces with the wear and tear and centrifugal strain of 
disintegrating vice. These ' ten righteous ' are the secret and 
immortal cabal which unconsciously plots the preservation of 

■^ Rev. Daniel Dorchester, D.D. 



l8o FREE AMERICA BORN OF THE BIBLE. 

the State, as selfishness, and low chicanery, and political in- 
trigue, are forever plotting its destructibn." ^ 

These five million men — to call them so few — profess that 
they were morally renewed by the Bible ; to which we must add 
the devout and noble Catholics and Jews throughout the land 
who drink the same living waters. 

As the legend is, that in Germany there was an estate on 
which every rock, being split, and every tree, being cut, showed 
the heraldic device of the owner, so America, in every township, 
in all her institutions, bears the imprinted device of the Bible. 

More senseless than the French commune, which pulled the 
bronze Napoleon from the Vendome column, wreathed with 
the story and the glory of French victories, is the spirit of to- 
day, the American commune, which would hurl from its place, 
where set by the State, " full high advanced " before the eyes 
of youth, — from the desk in the public school, — the Bible, 
golden, glorious, on the summit of the column which is 
wreathed from pediment to capital with the achievements of 
this book, the story of all that is great and good in American 
history. 

1 Primeval World, pp. a6i, 262. 



THE BIBLE IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, AND 
THE RELIGIONISTS. 



How the sons of the Pilgrims, the descendants of the settlers 
at Jamestown, and, in general, those of English ancestry in our 
country, regard the Bible in the public school, is apparent. Ex- 
otic faiths have appeared since the days of the fathers. Rare 
plants or weeds, whichever they be, they have right to equal 
place in our free soil with the primitive American religion, 
whose root is the open, the entire Bible. Though these religion- 
ists are new-comers, they are not, legally and constitutionally, 
interlopers. 

And, at least when they come to have considerable numbers, 
their voice is equally potent with that of original Americans in 
forming the State and its institutions. The State, however 
tenacious of her original policy, is to change it upon a fair 
representation of a sufficient number, and especially upon 
serious and well-grounded objection that the sacred rights of 
conscience are invaded. But the State would be unwise to 
depart from an original sound policy on the mere clamor of 
invasion of conscience, when a more penetrating and compre- 
hensive study of the situation would discern no such invasion 
of conscience, but would discover, that, by fair explanations, 
her policy would seem to contravene no man's conscience, but, 
on various grounds, would appear a policy to be judiciously 
yet firmly held to. This, to the writer, is the present policy of 

the State in retaining the Bible in its place in the school. 

i8i 



1 82 THE BTBLE IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, 

This paper will consider the view of the Pantheist^ the Hebrew^ 
the Freethinker^ a?id the Romanist^ on the Bible and the School. 
We shall find ourselves coming to the view that " the recog- 
nition of God by the Bible in public schools," rightly under- 
stood, infringes no right of conscience, cannot give just offence 
to any, while it still remains the high and solemn duty of the 
State to itself. 

THE PANTHEIST 

has not, I believe, felt moved to declare himself directly upon 
the subject. From the utterances of these seers, we presume 
that no objection would be made by them, except, perhaps, an 
objection to the idea of limiting worship and divine" thought to 
book and time and place. This could not be a serious objec- 
tion. The sayings of these men make us feel, the rather, that, 
as God is all and in all, the devout soul would appropriately 
enter into study by some act of devotion. 

Three leading Pantheists have uttered themselves in what 
may bear on this subject, — one German, a second English, the 
third American, — Goethe, Carlyle, Emerson. 

Goethe, in " Wilhelm Meister's Travels," ^ has stirred in 
every reader delightful and suggestive thoughts in describing 
the " Great Institution " of 3'outhful education. Every one is as 
much struck as was Wilhelm by the " Three Reverences : " — 

" The youngest laid their arms crosswise over their breasts, 
and looked cheerfully up to the sky; those of middle size 
held their hands on their backs, and looked smiling on the 
ground ; the eldest stood with a frank and spirited air, their 
arms stretched down. They turned their heads to the right, and 
formed themselves into a line ; whereas the others kept sepa- 
rate, each where he chanced to be." 

Wilhelm asked explanation. " One thing there is on which 
all depends for making man in every point a man," — "Rever- 
ence ! " " We inculcate a threefold reverence, which, when 
commingled and formed into one whole, attains its highest 
force and effect. The first is reverence for what is above us. 

* Chapter x. 



AND THE RELIGIONISTS. 183 

That posture, — the arms crossed over the breast, the look 
turned toward heaven, — that is what we have enjoined on young 
children, requiring from them thereby a testimony that there is 
a God above, who images and reveals himself in parents, teach- 
ers, superiors." Wilhelm in one field saw some children who 
did not perform the reverence, but kept at work. He asked 
what it meant. " It is full of meaning ; for it is the highest 
punishment which we inflict on our pupils : they are declared 
unworthy to show reverence, and obliged to exhibit themselves 
as rude and uncultivated natures." It can hardly be doubted 
that Goethe would not object to an act of reverence in opening 
the public school. He would be more apt to be of the mind of 
Charles Lamb : " Why have we no ' grace ' for books, those 
spiritual repasts, — a grace before Milton, a grace before 
Shakspeare, a devotional exercise proper to be said before 
reading 'The Fairy Queen '? " What he thinks of the Scrip- 
tures, Wilhelm tells us, in traversing the first of the three 
great departments. " One great advantage " of the Hebrew 
riation "is its excellent collection of sacred books. These 
stand so happily combined together, that, even out of the most 
diverse elements, the feeling of a whole still rises before us. 
They are complete enough to satisfy, fragmentary enough to 
excite, barbarous enough to arouse, tender enough to appease ; 
and for how many other contradicting merits might not these 
books, might not this one book, be praised ! " 

One cannot believe that Goethe would have any hesitation, if 
a boy at the school-form, to hear this book read. 

Carlyle speaks no otherwise. Discoursing on Jesuitism, he 

exclaims, "The Hebrew Bible, is it not before all things true as 

no other book ever was or will be ? " " Every nation, I s-uppose, 

was made by God, and every man too : only there are some 

nations, like some men, who know it, and some who do not. 

I 
The great nations are they that know it well : the small and 

contemptible, both of men and nations, are they that either 

have never known it, or soon forgotten it, and never laid it to 

heart. Of these comes nothing. The measure of a nation's 

greatness, of its worth under this sky to God and to man, is not 



184 THE BIBLE IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, 

the quantity of cotton it can spin, the quantity of bullion it has 
realized, but the quantity of heroisms it has achieved, of noble 
pieties and valiant wisdoms that were in it, that are still in it. 
Beyond doubt, the Almighty Maker made the English too, and 
has been and is miraculously present here. The more is the 
pity for us if our eyes have grown owlish, and cannot see this 
fact of facts when it is before us ! Once it was known that the 
Highest did of a surety dwell in this nation, divinely avenging, 
and divinely saving and rewarding ; leading, by steep and 
flaming paths, by heroisms, pieties, and noble acts and thoughts, 
this nation heavenward, if it would dare." 

"The early nations of the world — all nations, so long as they 
continued simple and in earnest — knew, without teaching, that 
their history was an epic and Bible, the clouded, struggling 
image of a God's presence, the action of heroes and inspired." 
Carlyle, evidently, would not banish the ^'' truest hook^^ from its 
place of inspiring the future citizens and statesmen of England. 

The American Pantheist speaks thus : " The religious senti- 
ment is divine and deifying. It is the beatitude of man. It 
makes him illimitable." "The expressions of this sentiment 
affect us more than all other compositions. The sentences of 
the oldest time, which ejaculate this piety, are still fresh and 
fragrant. This thought dwelled always deepest in the minds of 
men in the devout and contemplative East, not alone in Pales- 
tine, where it reached its purest expression." "Europe has 
always owed to Oriental genius its divine impulses. What these 
holy bards said all sane men found agreeable and true. And 
;the unique impression of Jesus upon mankind, whose name is 
not so much written as ploughed into the history of this world, 
Is proof of virtue of this infusion." "That Supreme Beauty 
ravished the souls of those Eastern men, and chiefly of those 
Hebrews." " The Hebrew and Greek Scriptures contain im- 
mortal sentences that have been bread of life to millions." 

We cannot imagine, after these unanimous utterances, that 
the Pantheists would thrust out the Bible from the place of 
• culture, and preparation for citizenship. 



AND THE RELIGIONISTS. 185 



THE HEBREW 

varies in his view of the Bible in the schools, according to the 
manner in which the Bible is to be read. The writer has lately 
had an interesting conversation with an intelligent lady, daugh- 
ter of a rabbi whose name is well known in the United States. 
While she does not place a high value on the devotional exercise 
as now conducted — and who can? — she does not object to the 
reading of the Bible in the schools. She objects to the teaching 
of the doctrines of the New Testament, but not to the reading 
of it, without note or comment, as a good and moral book. 
Jesus she esteems as a great and good man ; to her mind, in 
some respects, an enthusiast, but not an impostor : but in his 
words, and in the Lord's Prayer, she finds nothing original, no 
advance upon the Hebrew Scriptures, She would, if a teacher, 
and if left to herself, read entirely from the Old Testament ; 
but, if reading from the New Testament were in the regulations, 
she would not hesitate to read, as from a good book ; nor would 
she fail in having the Lord's Prayer recited, if prescribed. 
From her standpoint, her view is simple and consistent ; and it 
must, one would think, be the view of every fair-mainded Jew. 

Still it is well known, that, in the Cincinnati discussion, some, 
though not all, of the leading Jews advocated the exclusion of 
the Bible, yet not bitterly like some religionists. This lady 
believed they did so on the ground that the doctrines of the New 
Testament were also taught. 

In this " The Jewish Times " agrees. " That citizens of the 
Hebrew faith object to the reading of the -New Testament, 
and prayers and hymns recognizing the divinity of Christ, re- 
quires no illustration." " Whether a conscientious Israelite can 
ever consent to allow his children to listen to the creed and 
dogmas evolved from the reading of the New Testament, or to 
specific Christian prayers and hymns, may be safely left to the 
decision of impartial and unprejudiced hearers." 

And of course there can be no doubt what " impartial and 
unprejudiced men" would say; namely, that the teaching of 
personal religion is not the ofiice of public education ; nor does 



l86 THE BIBLE IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, 

the objection lie against the simple reading, without note or 
comment, of the Scriptures, Old and New. 

The only objection, then, which a Jew would consistently 
make, would be that of an extreme Jew, if such there now are, 
who, first, regards Jesus as an impostor, and so saturated with 
the element of iriveracity ; and, second, who believes that the 
New Testament teaches any immorality. We do not know of 
any Jew who censures the New Testament as immoral ; and to 
" put ourselves in his place " by comparison of our own feeling 
in the supposed case of the reading in school with the Bible ot 
moral parts of Mohammed's book, the Koran, we see no reason 
for conscientious scruples on the part of any Jew against hear- 
ing the New Testament read. But we are relieved on this point 
by the Hebrew himself : ^ "It is not the ethics of the New Tes- 
tament to which we object ; for what else are they but the echo 
or the very copy of our own Bible ? Moreover, we hold that a 
moral precept or maxim is good, whether contained in the New 
Testament, the Koran, or Zend Avesta, whether uttered by 
Epictetus or Seneca, provided it does not militate against our 
own biblical standard.'' 

To a Scripture service from both Old and New Testament, 
properly conducted, as we shall hereafter describe it, the Jew 
could therefore have no conscientious or decided objection ; 
while if conducted aright, and, as it ought to be, unsectarianly, 
his religious nature would approve it. 

How should a Jew be ashamed of the most illustrious Israelite, 
— the Rabbi, who with his disciples, also Israelites, has given 
more truth to the world than Plato ; who broke the pericarp, 
and scattered the seeds of Israel's oracles over the earth ; 
whose followers have translated Moses and the Psalms into a 
hundred and fifty languages, and taught monotheism to the 
Greenlander and the Pacific-Islander ? 

THE FREETHINKER 

has bitter objections against the reading of the Bible in the 
public schools ; but, set in sunlight, they evaporate like dew. 

* Jewish Times, Jan. 28, 1870. 



AND THE RELIGIONISTS. 187 

The Freethinker entertains one of two notions, — either there is 
no God, or there is no Word of God. This second Freethinker 
sometimes says, further, that the so-called Word of God contains 
not even a worthy conception of God and his righteousness. 

First, the Freethinker who is an Atheist, and believing in no 
God, of course believes not in providence, prayer, scripture, or 
the nation's responsibility. Such men, happily rare, I say it 
deliberately, are to be deemed mo?2sfrosities of human nature ; 
nor can the State desist from her duty in bringing up her 
nursling children in recognition of the providence of God 
because a monstrosity does not believe in a God. "Whilst I 
was in America," says Tocqueville, " a witness who happened 
to be called at the sessions of the county of Chester, state of 
New York, declared he did not believe in the existence of God, 
or in the immortality of the soul. The judge refused to admit 
his evidence, on the ground that the witness had destroyed 
beforehand all the confidence of the court in what he was 
about to say." 

The other Freethinker objects to the Bible, because, though 
he believes in God, he believes in no Word of God. But this 
need not make any scruple in his mind, if the service is con- 
ducted aright, and as we shall hereafter describe it ; for the 
view we are all along taking goes only so far as that the Bible 
is a word about God, and, in the apprehension of American 
statesmen, the best. The Freethinker, then, could have no 
more scruple in reading the Bible in public school than in read- 
ing Emerson's essay on the " Over-Soul." 

But the Deistic Freethinker sometimes goes farther, and 
declares the Bible ungodly and immoral. Now, this is a ques- 
tion entirely for the State to decide by some Moral Board of 
Health. A mere ipse dixit does not remove a building which 
is averred to be a nuisance ; nor can the Freethinker's ipse dixit 
stand against the verdict of the State, agreeing with Jefferson, 
that " the studious perusal of this volume makes better citizens, 
neighbors, and husbands." But the Freethinker says there are 
certainly parts of the Bible which are not fit for public reading. 
Nobody denies this. A gentleman was once riding with Prof. 



l88 THE BIBLE IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, 

Greenleaf of Harvard Law School, and making this objection to 
considering the Bible the word of God, that there are parts of 
it which he would not read before his family. " Do you sit in 
your parlor before your family with your naked feet displayed ? " 
— " Certainly not." — " Then God did not make your feet." ^ 

No one proposes to read all the Bible in the public school : 
not that there is any thing inveracious or immoral ; but it is not 
all suitable for the time, occasion, and youthful audience. 

There seems no ground for any conscientious Freethinker to 
object to recognizing God in his child's education by reading 
before him select passages from a book about God which has 
the veneration of the majority of men, and is called the Bible. 

It remains to consider the view of 

THE ROMANIST. 

The Catholic says four things : — 

I. Allow me to teach my religion in the public schools. 

This, it must be admitted, the Catholic Church could insist 
upon in an ecclesiastical State of her own founding. Thus 
Massachusetts was for some seventy years, as is shown in the 
Lowell Lectures by George E. Ellis and Joel Parker, a " bibli- 
cal Commonwealth." But in a free State the case is different. 
Here the State recognizes herself as a " moral personality," 
responsible directly to God. Examine the claim above, when 
made in a free State. 

The Catholic has three elements in his religion : — 

I. Natural religion^ the belief in God and morality. This is 
not peculiar to him, but is common to all men. The State takes 
cognizance of this natural religion, lives by it, and should give it 
a place in education. Brownson well says, " The American 
State recognizes only the catholic religion. It eschews all sec- 
tarianism. The State conforms to what each holds that is 
catholic, that is always and everywhere religion; and whatever 
is not catholic it leaves, as outside of its province, to live or 
die, according to its own inherent vitality, or want of vitality. 
The State conscience is catholic, not sectarian." 

1 N. Adams, D.D. : Our Bible. 



AND THE RELIGIONISTS. 189 

2. His own peculiar dogmas^ such as the homage to the Virgin, 
purgatory, worship of the saints, transubstantiation, and the Kke. 
These are a jDart of personal religion, and, with all else which 
concerns a man's personal acceptance with God, is by no means 
to be taught by the State. 

3. The control of government by the ecclesiastical, the papal 
power. This, indeed, Brownson denies, and so takes the true 
American ground. '' Canonists have maintained that the sub- 
jects of other States may even engage in war with the Pope as 
prince, without breach of their fidelity to him as pontiff, or su- 
preme visible head of the Church." " The Church not only dis- 
tinguishes between the two powers, but recognizes as legitimate 
governments that manifestly do not derive from God through 
her. St. Paul enjoins obedience to the Roman emperors for 
conscience' sake." So far, so good ; but he adds, " No doubt, 
as the authority of the Church is derived immediately from God 
in a supernatural manner, and as she holds that the State de- 
rives its authority only mediately from him in a natural mode, 
she asserts the superiority of her authority, and that, in case of 
conflict between the two powers, the civil must yield." Edward 
Beecher, in " Papal Conspiracy Exposed," has shown what is 
known to every reader of history, — how the Papal power has 
claimed dominion over States. This doctrine of the PajDal 
creed cannot be taught in the schools of a free State. It is 
against the ideas that the " State is a moral personality ; " that 
" it is sovereign ; " that " it has a right to independent exist • 
ence." 

The American people may as well learn now as after the ex- 
treme disaster to the nation, that this Papal idea is destructive of 
the nation. " Obsta principiis." Bring forth all the rifles at 
Springfield, let there be Borodinos, before we admit the thinnest 
blade of this entering wedge, whether called a political or, re- 
ligious idea, that the Papacy rules States. 

A late writer, describing Bismarck, says, " I shall never for- 
get the frantic look of surprise and rage which took possession 
of the group of clericals seated right in front of him as he 
related the old incident of Henry IV. standing in his shirt at 



1 90 THE BIBLE IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, 

Canossa until it was the Pope's pleasure to receive him. 'We 
desire,' said he, without changing a muscle of his face, or rais- 
ing his voice in the least, — ' we desire to live in peace with the 
Romish Church, with bishops, and with pope ; but, still,' — paus- 
ing and stammering, — ' we are not going to Canossa I ' The effect 
was indescribable ; and, from that day to this, Germany has re- 
peated Bismarck's 'We are not going to Canossa.' " 

The Catholic cannot teach his religion in the public school, or 
the Jesuit his politics. 

Failing in this, the Catholic proceeds, — 

11. Give me, then, my part of the school money, and allow me to 
have my part of the schools under my control. 

It is impossible to concede this ; for, 

1. The State knows nothing of ecclesiastical bodies, neither one 
nor another. The State, as Mulford has said, is herself a 
" moral personality," responsible directly to God for her char- 
acter ; and her citizens are responsible to her, 

2. She is solicitous for her public 7norality, and is aware that 
her integrity and existence depend upon it. She cannot allow 
Jesuits, Mormons, Freelovers, to have separate schools, unin- 
spected and uncontrolled, where, for all she may do, all history 
may be falsified, and morality may be so mistaught that the 
State character may be honeycombed, and fall. 

With all deference to the holy and good men in this church, 
this ecclesiastical organization — as in the Jesuits, for example, 
and in the defence of the violation of the safe conduct of 
Huss — has promulgated such a doctrine of inveracity as no 
State, with the remembrance of St. Bartholomew before it, 
can allow to be taught in schools for which she is respon- 
sible. 

3. The State has great ends to gain by public schools in which 
all* her future, citizens shall mingle. Guizot said, forty years 
ago, " It is in general desirable that children whose families do 
not profess the same creed should early contract, by frequent- 
ing the same schools, those habits of reciprocal friendship and 
natural tolerance, which may ripen later, when they live as 
gi own-up citizens, into justice and harmony." 



AND THE RELIGIONISTS. 191 

Dr. William Taylor, in " Home Missionary," 1875, says, 
"When we think of the thousands of immigrants, of different 
nationalities and various faiths, who are continually landing on 
our shores, and passing on to the far Western settlements, the 
necessity for keeping up this blessed system becomes impera- 
tive. 

" The common school is the great assimilating organ of the 
body politic. Children go into it English, Irish, Scotch, Ger- 
man, Danish, Norwegian, French, Italian : they come out Amer- 
ican. In the experiences and companionships of the school 
they lay up memories which bind them to each other and to the 
country ever after." 

"There is nothing, therefore, so important for the giving of 
unity and homogeneousness to our population as the mainte- 
nance and extension of the public-school system." 

4. She owes it to herself to teach systemati:ally that she is not 
a vassal, but an indepe?ident personality^ responsible directly to 
God, and her citizens responsible in her sphere only to her. 
She never -can safely allow any body of her citizens to be 
brought up in seclusion, and as a kind of secret society, to 
hold that nationality is subject to Papacy. That is treason, as 
Bismarck has dealt with it. She cannot, perhaps, interfere with 
private teaching of this doctrine ; but she can at least neutralize 
it, and insist that all her youth shall receive her teaching on this 
matter. 

Failing in this also, he goes on to say, — 

III. Cojicede to 7ne, then, that, in the public school, there shall be 
absolutely nothing said about religioji ; that education shall be ab- 
solutely secular. 

This, too, is impossible ; for, 

1. The State is a moral persanality, responsible to God, and 
therefore, as a State, and in schools preparatory to the State, 
MUST recognize him. 

2. The State must teach so much morality as will preserve her. 
These two things the State must do. In addition, 

3. The State has a right to hai'c religious exercises for her 
youth from a book which her statesmen consider the best book 



192 THE BIBLE IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, 

about God, the parent of public education, and the best fos- 
terer of republics.^ 

4. The State has a right to introduce the Bible as literature. 

Failing in all his representation to secure the State's ap- 
proval and concession, the Catholic next says, in the wail of 
complaint before the people, — 

IV. My rights of conscience are invaded. " If it were so, it 
were a grievous fault," and should be rectified. The State 
undoubtedly should respect the conscience of her citizens. It 
was a " grievous fault," and just occasion for mutiny, that the 
Sepoys were compelled to use cartridges made with hogs' 
grease. But the cry of " Conscience " by the Papist can be 
plainly shown not to be just. Here we dwell. We desire to 
grind to powder, and fling to the winds, this claim of con- 
science abused. Here is the strength of the great hierarchical 
opposition to the Bible in the schools, that they have been able 
to confuse the minds of a people like ours, because sensitive, 
and regardful of conscience and personal rights. If I mistake 
not, we shall find that their cry of abuse of conscience is alto- 
gether an empty one. 

Let us address ourselves calmly and philosophically to the 
problem. The State should respect individual conscience. 
Thus the State is right in adapting the Sabbath laws to the 
Jew, who understands that the Eternal lays upon his con- 
science to keep the seventh day. 

But the State is not bound to give up great and positive bene- 
fits on account of merely constructive commands^ even if addressed 
to the conscience. If, in time of war, the Jew carries the ob- 
servance of the Sabbath to the fanatic extent of the Jews 
against Titus, the State does not, therefore, excuse him from 
picket and other military duty on that day ; nor does the State, 
on plea of conscience, excuse the Quaker from military service; 
or, what is the same thing, obtaining a substitute. 

They perform these duties under protest as individuals, and 
in deference to the divine State, where they are not sure they 
h?iVQ positive command from God, faithfully as atoms of the State. 

* De Tocqueville. 



AND THE RELIGIONISTS. 193 

Finding no positive or moral command to make the matter 
stringent on their conscience, men feel at liberty to subordinate 
themselves to the State, and disregard these constructive com- 
mands, and do these things rather than endure martyrdom, 
which they would do if commanded to lie, or worship idols. This 
might be the case in regard to the Romanist in reading King 
James' version, even had he conscientious scruples. Not to 
read this, at most, is only a constructive command of God, made 
through another, who arrives at the idea that that is God's will, 
only after meditation and inference, in both which may lurk 
error which vitiates the result ; and the State may righteously 
hold the citizen to this act, and he may, without injury of con- 
science, perform it, even if, as in the cases above, there is in 
some sort a conscie7itious scruple. 

But now, in the case of the Catholic and King James' ver- 
sion, there is no conscientious scruple. This I hope to make 
plain. 

Observe a distinction, now, we believe, for the first time 
drawn, yet, we believe, true and plain, and greatly to be regarded 
in this discussion. There is a scruple of C07iscie7tce, and there is 
a scruple of antagonism. 

Conscience is the moral faculty deciding right and wrong, as in 
the lie, disobedience to authority, and the like. It has been 
called " the voice of God in the soul of man." The peculiarity 
of conscience is, that it impresses us directly^ as the direct voice 
of God to us, which we must observe in our direct responsibility 
to God. Antagonism is such a condition of mind and sensibili- 
ties as will not allow one to regard with acceptance or peace, 
or other than aversion, the thing in question. The scruple of 
the Puritans against the Maypole on Merry Mount was one of 
antagonism ; also their scruple against Christmas. They could 
not like it, because it was " Popish." Roger Williams and Gov. 
Endicott, cutting the cross out of the colonial flag, followed a 
scruple, not of conscience, but of a7ttagonism. So, whoever, im- 
bidden, took sword to slay on St. Bartholomew's Day, acted 
from antagonism, not conscience. 

Now, it is not said that an individual or a state should lightly 



194 THE BIBLE IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, 

disregard scruples of antagonism ; but it is obvious that they 
should not erect those antagonisms to the dignit}^ of clear, 
grand, moral appeals of conscience. The two are clearly 
studied, side by side, in the Jew's righteous demand for per- 
mission to observe the seventh day commanded ot God, and 
the Puritan's prejudice against Christmas. One is conscience ; 
the other, aJitagonisin. 

Some one tells the story of the " Indian's conscience." He 
said his conscience forbade him to do a certain thing. " Con- 
science! what do you mean by conscience ? " — " Something in 
here," laying his hand on his breast, "which says I won''ty 

The scruples of the Roman Catholics in the present case are 
scruples of antagonism. 

(I.) The scruple of the Catholic is one of antagonism against State 
schools. It is simply against all his idea of education that it 
should be connected with the State, especially a State where 
Protestants are numerous. Dr. Peabody says, that, after a time, 
the Catholics left an evening school which he had established. 
He expostulated with the priest. The reply was, " Education 
is so great a boon, that we are unwilling that our people should 
be indebted for it to heretics. We would rather have them 
utterly ignorant than that their gratitude to Protestant teachers 
should make them look with favor-on the religion of their teach- 
ers." This is plainly a scruple of religious repulsion, not of 
conscience. 

Cincinnati was unwise enough to allow the Catholic children 
to sequester themselves from the public schools. A committee 
of conference with the archbishop, — think of the deg7^adation, 
— to bring about some union, received this reply, that, "during 
the sitting of the CEcumenical Council at Rome, he would ask 
the opinion of Pope Pius IX. on the subject, and then communi- 
cate to the School Board the result of his mission." "What! " 
said Mr. Mayo of the School Board, "shall we, the free citizens 
of this gigantic country, wait for the decision of a prince whose 
political influence is reduced to a minimum, and who was the 
only prince of Europe who recognized the rebel States as a 
gov£;r.nment ? Never, never!" This unwillingness to enter 



AND THE RELIGIONISTS. 195 

State schools is a scruple of antagonism. A man does not, go 
four thousand miles to make inquiries before a scruple of con- 
science leaps upon him. The State does not yield because of 
this scruple of antagonism, but requires all her youth to attend 
public school. 

(II.) A scruple of antagonism it is against King jfames^ version 
of the Bible. It is not denied that it is a good translation of 
the Bible. Bishop McQuaid, we believe, admitted it. These 
two books are translations of the same original. They are as 
near as any two translations of any book. What Catholic can 
say that one of these — the poorer translation, not directly of the 
inspired original — is sacrosanctus^ and the other sinful ? As to 
King James' version, " Geddes, the most learned biblical scholar 
among the Romanists," says Dr. Peabody, " speaks of it as of 
all versions the most excellent for accuracy, ^fidelity, and the 
closest attention to the letter of the text. An influential Ameri- 
can priest in one of our great cities said, ' I admit that the 
English Bible is a perfectly fair translation, and I think it far 
preferable to the Douai Bible ; but our foreign ecclesiastics, and 
especially the authorities in Rome, cannot be induced to look 
upon it in that light, and could not fail to regard our acquies- 
cence in its use as schismatic' " It is therefore not a scruple 
of conscience, but of sectarian repulsion, which leads a Roman 
Catholic to dislike the English translation of the Bible. Worse 
than that, it is by their own confession the scruple of repulsion, 
not so micch of the America7i ecclesiastics^ as of foreign .ecclesiastics 
who dominate the America?!. 

There is a common misunderstanding about the Douai version 
which it is worth while to correct. " The Catholic World " says 
(November, 1870), " We Catholics have actually no standard 
English Bible ; and, as no particular edition is made compulsory 
on any, we are not likely to force any on our fellow-citizens." 
" It is an impression with some, that the Douai Bible was ap- 
proved at Rome : this is an error. Rome does not give any 
approbation to vernacular versions j the decision as to them, in 
point of orthodoxy, fidelity, and purity of language, being left to 
the bishop in whose diocese the volume appears. Hence the 



196 THE BIBLE IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, 

wide latitude for various versions, and the corresponding diffi- 
culty of making any one edition a standard." 

(III.) The scruple is also one of antagoiiism when the two are 
united^ the Bible and the public school. Neither is King James' 
version Protestant, but only an English version \ nor is the 
public school a Pratestant school, but only a State school ; and 
any attempt to represent the reading of this book as a Prot- 
estant domination over the religion of Catholics is an attempt 
to arouse to still higher pitch, not scruples of conscience, but 
scruples of antagonism. 

(IV.) Under one condition only can there be considered a real 
scruple of conscience in this case; namely, if the Pope of Rome 
^\i2\\ command h.vi\&x\Q,2Ci\ citizens not to read King James' version 
in our public schools. I weigh well my words, and speak delib- 
erately, when I say, that that is a tyranny worse than the Colo- 
nies ever suffered from King George ; that the sooner the Pope 
of Rome pleases to ordaiit by p07itifcal bull, that, i7i the public free 
schools of America, any class of Americafi citize?is shall not read or 
hear read any moral and proper book whatever which the State 
thinks best to be read for her welfare, which, for two centuries, 
she has decreed should be read, the sooner will come the solution of 
the question, whether the palace of the Vatican or the American 
legislature rules America ; the soo7ier will co7ne the war of direct 
a7itag07tism , and perhaps of arms, by so7ne prophesied, betwee7i the 
Papacy a7id the free gover7ime7it. A7id, if " the war is i7ievitable, 
let it co7ne.^^ 

Until that mandate shall go forth from the Roman Vatican, 
that American Catholics shall not read King James' version of 
the Bible at the bidding of the State in her public schools, the 
scruples of Catholics are scruples of antagonism, and not of 
Conscience. 

Yet the writer admits that the biblical service is to be con- 
ducted, under the State, more firmly a7id decidedly tha7i now, yet 
so as to give no needless offence to our Romanist citizens. The 
plain way is to establish by law and statute that Catholic teach- 
ers and scholars are at equal liberty to read from the Douai 
Bible, and from that version repeat the Lord's Prayer; and, in 



AND THE RELIGIONISTS. 197 

the pericope of the appointed sections of the Scriptures for daily 
reading, they should have fair hand' in the sections to be made. 
But the practical carrying oUt of the views which have been dis- 
cussed in these essays will be set forth in another paper. 

Yet it must be said emphatically, as the final word of America, 
that however considerate, to the last extreme of what is proper, 
of the feelings of all men in the manner of recognizing God in 
public education by the Bible, and by reverent address to God, 
the thmg itself — American as it is, as it has been for two cen- 
turies, and for two centuries beneficial, if not essential, to the 
State, and becoming in itself — will not be given up at the beck 
of a foreign mojiarck, whether his throne be on the Seven Hills, 
or on the Bosphorus, or in Pekin. "WiR gehen nicht nach 
Canossa," — " We are not going to Canossa." 



STATE SCHOOLS AND CHURCH SCHOOLS. 



Should we allow Rome to pass the Danube^ the Balkans will 
be the State schools. 

For this is the order of the conflicts before us: — 

First^ If not the Papal, then no religion in public education. 

Second, Papal-church schools, instead of State schools, for 
Catholics. 

Third (the Constantinople), Papal-church schools for the 
nation, and compulsory on all. 

This, we know very well, will provoke a smile ; but the time 
may not be far off when it shall cause a groan. Fifty years 
hence, this volume may be burnt under the Great Elm. " You 
do not feel in America," said an English lady to me, "as we 
do in England. There we see the places where Ro,me burnt 
the martyrs. When I was a little girl, my father took me to the 
place, and said, ' Here, oti this spot, Cranmer was burnt.' " 

We forget Mexico, though she touches elbows with us on the 
continent ; we forget that a Catholic emperor sent over ocean 
and gulf a Catholic prince ; we forget the Ahualulco mob 
of 1874, excited by the priest, in which Stephens was assassi- 
nated ; and the San Miguel massacre of two summers ago, in 
which the mob had "passports to heaven," signed by the 
bishop.-^ 

We say America is strong. Samson lacked not strength. 
The strong slept : he arose weak, " like any other man," 

1 Harper's Weekly. 
198 



STATE SCHOOLS AND CHURCH SCHOOLS. 199 

shorn by " the liers in wait " of his locks of strength, wliich God 
had bidden him preserve. Not ignorance, but presumption, was 
his fatal fault : it is ours. Rome tells us distinctly — not, 
perhaps, through American mouths, but from her Italian throne 
— what she means to do.-^ America settles herself to slumber, 
knowijig that Philistia wakes and waits. 

But, says one, America has an unconquerable free spirit. 
France, too, once had her Henry of Navarre, and her Galilean 
church and bishops. 

Rome is audacious and plausible in her demands. Rome 
knows when to rest her claims, and when to press them. But 
let it be remembered, that while all other religions confess that 
they have been marred by imperfections, and with shame repu- 
diate some things in their past, and have always believed with 
Pastor Robinson that " new light will break out of the Word," 
Rome boasts that she is ^''Semper eadem.^'' We can therefore 
always reason from her past to her future. Says one Romanist 
writer (Brownson), " The answers which the Church gives to 
all great practical questions have become historical. These 
answers are, in many instances, no doubt, very offensive to the 
spirit of the present age, and such as the prevailing public 
opinion denounces ; but there they stand on the page of history, 
and can neither be honestly nor successfully denied, or ex- 
plained away. What the Church has done, what she has ex- 
pressed or tacitly approved in the past, that is exactly what 
she will do, expressly or tacitly approve, in the future, if the 
same circumstances occur." 

There is plausibility and quiet persistence in the cry of the 
sectarianism of public schools in which the English Bible is 
used, — plausibility and quiet persistence in the demand for 
church schools in lieu of public schools. When this demand 
grows loud, our superficial men, — for there has not yet arisen 
a STATESMAN on tlds subject, — such men as Bismarck, as Vinet, 
Guizot, Cousin, or as our own Horace Mann, are needed to apply 
their broad minds profoundly and patiently to this theme, and 
then give the Achillean shout which will rouse the Greeks, — 

1 Syllabus, §§ 55, 78, &c. 



200 STATE SCHOOLS AND CHURCH SCHOOLS. 

our superficial men, flustered, perturbed, as tlie matter presses 
for instant action, will yield to clamor, because they have not 
thought down to the foundations. 

Try we, then, while we may, to think this subject clear, — 
forge anchor strong in these sunny days, — State schools and 
Church schools. Let us not yield to the plausibility of Church 
schools, but understand the rationality and validity of State 
schools. 

The mind, at the mention of this theme, naturally turns to the 
discussion, "The State and the Church." That subject fitly 
precedes this. It is necessary, indeed, to the round understand- 
ing of the theme before us. We do not mind telling the reader 
that a portion of that was originally studied as a preparation 
and preface for this ; but, on after-thought, it seemed co-ordinate 
with the other problems, and worthy of a separate place. The 
reader will not do amiss to recall that idea of State and Church, 
as a stiff stalk to hold the fruited branch, the theme we now 
pass to consider. 

That State schools should not give way to Church schools, to 
one Church's schools, or to separate Church schools, should, it 
would seem, be obvious from that preceding argument. But 
some considerations need to be dwelt upon. 

I. The general objects of State schools and of Church 
SCHOOLS ARE NOT THE SAME. The State school aims to make 
a citizen and a man : the Church school aims to make a dis- 
ciple and a redeemed spirit. The Church brings up the child 
in things relating to the realm of man's intercourse with God, 
and personal growth in the divine nature. The Church school 
may then add enough of natural learning to make him a New- 
ton ; or, if so disposed, can leave him unable to write his own 
name. 

The State, on the other hand, sets, as its object, to make the 
child a perfect natural man in himself, and, towards her, a good 
citizen. She pours into him a complete education of mind, 
heart, body (not spirit), and loyalty to the State. 

II. One OBJECT of State schools, a united citizenship, 

IS MARRED BY SEPARATE ChURCH SCHOOLS. Evcn SO far aS 



STATE SCHOOLS AND CHURCH SCHOOLS. 201 

they must be allowed to go, sects separate and weaken the body 
politic. Were every State in the Union a sect, a Mormon State, 
an Episcopalian State, a Catholic State, a Presbyterian State, 
the bond of national union would be essentially weaker. It 
is doubtful whether, even to advanced scholars, it is beneficial 
to sequester them from each other in denominational colleges. 
It cannot be for the advantage of a State, like Massachusetts, 
that, within its borders, the children should be segregated, — 
these into a Catholic school, these into an Episcopalian, a 
Presbyterian, a Methodist, a Mormon, a Mohammedan, a Chi- 
nese school. This cannot be conducive to union or loyalty. 
Guizot said forty years ago, " It is, in general, desirable that 
children whose families do not profess the same creed should 
early contract, by frequenting the same schools, those habits of 
reciprocal friendship and natural tolerance, which may ripen 
later, when they live as grown-up citizens, into justice and har- 
mony." Dr. William Taylor, in "Home Missionary" (1875), 
says, " When we think of the thousands of immigrants of differ- 
ent nationalities and various faiths who are continually landing 
on our shores, and passing on to the far Western settlements, 
the necessity for keeping up this blessed system becomes 
imperative. 

" The common school is the great assimilating organ of the 
body politic. Children go into it English, Irish, Scotch, Ger- 
man, Danish, Norwegian, French, Italian : they come out Amer- 
ican. In the experiences and companionship of the school 
they lay up memories which bind them to each other and to 
the country ever after." 

" There is, therefore, nothing so important for the giving of 
unity and homogeneousness to our population as the mainte- 
nance and extension of the public-school system." 

III. State schools are more apt than Church schools 

TO GIVE A COMPLETE DEVELOPMENT TO THE NATURAL MAN. 

The Church school may deliberately curtail all education not 
spiritual. The answer of Omar to his general, as to what he 
should do with the captured Alexandrian Library, comes to 
mind " If these writings agree with the Koran, they are use- 



202 STATE SCHOOLS AND CHURCH SCHOOLS. 

less, and need not be preserved ; if they disagree, they are per- 
nicious, and ought to be destroyed." The Church is apt to 
think natural learning injurious. " The more knowledge of the 
world, the more worldly-minded." A Church school will natu- 
rally place more value on reciting a list of her officers than on 
the whole curriculum of learning. 

Further : the Church may fail to give wide development, be- 
cause she does not appreciate the glory of the natural man. Greece 
had men magnificently endowed and disciplined, though they 
were not spiritually-minded. But the State, an enlarged natural 
man, is more likely to give a wide scope to all that is great in 
human nature to be and to know, — from gymnastic training to 
microscopic studies, from geology and astronomy to logic, and, 
on another side, from the gallantry of Sir Philip Sidney to the 
patriotism of a Sumner. No Church which assumes to control 
States will be apt to reckon the development of the natural man 
of so high worth. 

There are other less creditable reasons why a Church school 
might limit education, since it is asserted that some hierarchies 
foster ignorance ; but those above are sufficient, and we need 
not stain our page with unkind words. But the result of 
Church schools will generally be less fully developed men. 

IV. Church schools may limit education in all secu- 
lar KNOWLEDGE TO THE MINIMUM. This is natural. Some- 
times this occurs without evil intentions ; sometimes from dis- 
creditable reasons. We? find no fault now and here with Catholi- 
cism as a religion, except to say, that, being merely a church, 
it cannot be expected to care much for merely secular knowl- 
edge. It is, therefore, no more than what we might say as 
Catholic critics, were we of that church, when we adduce the 
following facts to show that Church schools, with creditable or 
discreditable intentions, limit secular knowledge to a minimum. 

First, there is the obvious yet striking fact, that children, 
restrained from public schools by ecclesiastics, are sent after- 
wards by their parents, who cannot forego the superior secular 
education. Joseph Cook, in one of his Monday Talks, names 
an American city where the Roman-Catholic children were 



STATE SCHOOLS AND CHURCH SCHOOLS. 203 

taken out of the public schools. " After being drawn into 
ecclesiastical Roman schools for a fortnight or a month, those 
children were found to be making very unsatisfactory progress ; 
and the parents came to the School Board in many cases, and 
said, ' Take our children back : they will behave themselves 
now.' ' We know that objections are made in ecclesiastical 
quarters ; but your schools are better than ours, and our 
children must have the best schools.' " An eminent professional 
man writes me, " I have been acquainted for years with in- 
stances in various communities where the direct and explicit 
prohibition of the Romish Church has availed oiily to keep 
Catholic children out of our public schools for a season ; the 
parents having worldly wisdom enough to see, that, if their sons 
and daughters are to get places in life, those places will be pro- 
cured by actual acquaintance with secular learning^ not by cer- 
tificates from some priest's school. In a word, the bread-and- 
butter argujnent is obviously and heavily on the public-school 
side." 

Napoleon Bonaparte, desiring an efficient national-school 
system, removed every priest from national schools. " Very 
little was taught, except the creed and the elements of the Papal 
faith." 

Victor Hugo, in one of his speeches, shows, we will not say 
how intentionally destructive, but how regardless, ecclesiasticism 
may become of good learning. He is speaking, we believe, of 
the Jesuits. 

" Thanks to you, Italy, mother of genius and nations, which 
has spread over the universe all the most brilliant marvels of 
poetry and the arts, — Italy, which has taught mankind to read, 
now knows not how to read. Yes, Italy is, of all the States of 
Europe, that where the smallest number of natives knows how 
to read. 

" Spain, magnificently endowed ; Spain, which received from 
the Romans her first civilization, from the Arabs her second 
civilization, from Providence, and in spite of you, a world, — 
America ; Spain, thanks to you, to your yoke of stupor, which 
is a yoke of degradation and decay, — Spain has lost that secret 



204 STATE SCHOOLS AND CHURCH SCHOOLS. 

power which it had from the Romans, that genius which it 
had from the Arabians, this world which it had from God ; and, 
in exchano;e for all which vou made it lose, it has received from 
you — the Inquisition." 

Coleridge, at Cologne, July 2, 1825, writes, " During the 
summer of last year I made the tour of Holland, Flanders, and 
up the Rhine as far as Bergen ; and among the few notes then 
taken I find the following : Every fresh opportunity of ex- 
amining the Roman-Catholic religion on the spot, every new 
fact that presents itself to my notice, increases my conviction, 
that its immediate basis, and the true grouncls for its continu- 
ance, are to be found in the wickedness, ignorance, and wretch- 
edness of the many ; and that the producing and continuing 
cause of this deplorable state is, that it is the interest of the 
Roman priesthood that so it should remain, as the surest, and 
in fact only, support of the Papal sovereignty and influence 
against the civil powers, and the reforms wished for by the most 
enlightened governments, as well as by all the better informed 
and wealthier class of Catholics generally. And as parts of the 
same policy, and equally indispensable to the interests of the 
triple crown, are the ignorance, grossness, excessive number 
and poverty, of the lower ecclesiastics themselves, including the 
religious orders." 

We will not insult the intelligent Catholic by calling this the 
result of his religious faith, nor by supposing that such result is 
less displeasing to him than to us ; but we ask him to observe, 
rather, as we observe ourselves, that this minimum of good 
learning in all natural things is sooner or later the result of 
ecclesiasticism and hierarchical organizations, intruding where 
they do not belong, and hacking the trees of good learning, 
even where they may be honestly trying to prune them. The 
hierarchy would fetter Galileo because the astronomy of Nature 
is not taught directly in the Bible. 

We call upon all enlightened Catholics to observe this inju- 
rious tendency of ecclesiastical schools to diminish good learn- 
ing, and, if you will, follow the sentiment of Brownson : " Keep 
your Catholicism j hut leave Europe behind you. ''^ "We need," 



STATE SCHOOLS AND CHURCH SCHOOLS. 205 

he says, "the CathoHcity, but not \\iq foreigJiisinT " The spread 
of Catholicity," he adds, " associated with the foreign civiliza- 
tion throughout the country, would destroy the American order 
of civilization, and reproduce in our New World that of the Old 
World, on which ours is, in our judgment, a decided advance." 

To all this it will be said by the shallow, that an adequate 
provision against this possible reduction of general education 
to the minimum in Church schools will be found in supervision 
of all schools, church and public, by one educational board, and 
by public compulsory examinations. 

To which the reply is immediate and obvious : If the State 
allows the Church to have separate schools, it must do so on 
one of two grounds : either, Ji^'st, on the Church's own claim, 
that the Church is the only proper teacher of youth ; or, second^ 
on the State's ground, as her assistant or deputy, giving this 
instruction to future citizens in behalf of the State. 

If, now, education is relegated to the Church on the first 
ground^ on which she claims it, then, by the same reason, if she 
has the sole right to educate, as she claims, she must also have 
the sole right to set the standard of education, order examina- 
tions, and do all other things which are a part of her alleged 
right to educate. 

On the second grou7id^ if education is yielded to the Church, as 
to a deputy assistant, in behalf of the State, there will be this 
twofold struggling force always operating, and successfully, to 
prevent any further control by the State over Church schools : 
firsts that the Church will always contend and protest, year by 
year, against examinations, on the allegement that her view is 
the right one, that she is not deputy of the State, but, in her 
own right, educator, and, being thus persistently aggressive, 
will in twenty years establish her view ; and, second^ that the 
same overshadowing influence, religico-political, by which she 
gained the greater, separate schools, will grant her, within a 
decade, absolute control of her separate schools. 'Tis the let- 
ting out the genie from the kettle, — easier to prevent than to 
remedy. When the genie has emerged in full size, think not he 
will be obsequious to you. 



2o6 STATE SCHOOLS AND CHURCH SCHOOLS. 

Public supervision could not, for Jive years, control an established 
Church-school system. After conceding into their hands the sys- 
tem, do we imagine we could administer the system? What, 
then, would prevent the Church school from limiting attendance 
to two hours a day, or general studies to the most rudimentary ? 
Do we have such an exalted idea of the Papal schools for the 
whole people, that we believe Rome wduld be strenuous to 
make her schools promotive of general education? Macaulay, 
impartial judge, who speaks generously of Rome before the 
Reformation, says of Rome since the Reformation, " To stunt 
the growth of the human mind has been her chief object. 
Throughout Christendom, whatever advance has been made in 
knowledge, in freedom, in wealth, and in the arts of life, has 
been made in spite of her." "Whoever, knowing what Italy 
and Scotland naturally are, and what, four hundred years ago, 
they actually were, shall now compare the country around Rome 
with the country around Edinburgh, will be able to form some 
judgment as to the tendency of Papal domination." " Who- 
ever passes in Germany from a Roman-Catholic to a Protes- 
tant principality, in Switzerland from a Roman-Catholic to a 
Protestant canton, finds that he has passed from a lower to a 
higher order of civilization." 

Catholic brother, we can believe you desire the ^''higher order 
of civilization " as well as we: therefore give your weight against 
ecclesiastical schools, whose inferior education and development 
is a patent fact, clear to observation, clear on the page of 
history. 

V. Church schools may teach pernicious morals. 

We do not say they will ; but they may. That is sufficient to 
bar them out, that they may teach pernicious morals. They can- 
not be prevented. 

But since Rome boasts herself semper eadem, and Jesuits are 
unchanged, it would not be asserting too much, that, sooner or 
later, Church schools will teach pernicious morals. 

The Mormon in his Church school will, of course, teach po- 
lygamy, which in the State is crime. The Papist will teach rev- 
erence to the Jesuits as the saintliest of men, of whom Pascal 



STATE SCHOOLS AND CHURCH SCHOOLS. 207 

says, " The Jesuits and the Inquisition are the two scourges of 
the truth." The Mohammedan Cliurch teaches proselyting by 
the sword, — " the faith, tribute, or the sword." The State 
moraUty, as the natural morality, is more likely to be a unit, 
and more likely to be true to nature, than these diversities of 
studied morals. 

" ' There is some one,' says Talleyrand, speaking of worldly 
politics, ' more clever than Voltaire, more sagacious than Napo- 
leon, more shrewd than each minister, past, present, and to 
come ; and that some one is everybody.'' There is some one, 
we may say, in ecclesiastical politics, more learned, more able, 
and more versatile, than any individual bishop, more likely to be 
right than the Pope of Rome, or the Wesleyan Conference, or 
the Geneva Assembly ; and that is the whole community .^^ 

Papal-church schools will teach that huge immorality, — per- 
secution for religion. 

Rome sowed that teaching so deeply into Europe, that the 
revered Calvin could not unlearn it. 

Rome will teach persecution thus : — 

Pope Pius IX. denounces as errors, that " The Church ought 
to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church ; " 
" In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic 
religion shall be held as the only religion of the State, to the ex- 
clusion of all other modes of worship ; " " Whence it has been 
wisely provided by law, in some countries called Catholic, that 
persons coming to reside therein shall enjoy the public exercise 
of their own worship." It is an error that " The Church has 
not the power of availing herself of force or indirect temporal 
power." ^ 

Liberatore : "Amongst the rights appertaining to a perfect 
society is that of coercing enemies, internal and external. 
Where, between the State 'and the Church, there is reciprocal 
alliance, there the right is exercised by the latter through the 
agency of the former ; but, where this alliance happens to be 
broken, manifestly this right of the Church cannot perish," &c, 

American Editors : " There is, ere long, to be a State religion 

1 Syllabus, §§ 55, 77, 78, 24. 



2o8 STATE SCHOOLS AND CHURCH SCHOOLS. 

in this country ; and that State religion is to be Roman Catho- 
lic." ^ " Religious liberty is merely endured until the opposite 
can be carried into effect without peril to the Catholic world." ^ 
" Protestantism of every form has not, and never can have, any 
rights where Catholicity is triumphant." ^ 

Historically she will teach it in one word, The Inquisition.* 
By defences of the Inqiiisitio7i : " A sense of duty obliges me 
to say that an heresiarch, an obstinate heretic, and a propagat- 
or of heresy, should indispiUably be ranked amo7tg the greatest 
criminals y ^ " That institution you may value as you choose ; 
you are at liberty to condemn the abuses and the cruelties of 
which it has been guilty through the violence of political pas- 
sions and the character of the Spaniard : yet one cannot but 
acknowledge, in the terrible part taken by the clergy in its trials, 

THE MOST LEGITIMATE AND MOST NATURAL EXERCISE OF ECCLE- 
SIASTICAL AUTHORITY." ^ 

Rome will teach " ecclesiastical utility,^^ — that that is right 
w^hich is useful to the Church. In the canon law, " An oath 
taken contrary to ecclesiastical utility is not binding." Again : 
" Oaths taken contrary to ecclesiastical utility are not oaths, 
but perjuries."^ 

Papal schools — which are Jesuit schools — will teach yesuit 
morals. 

We renew our demurrer, that we do not attack the Catholic 
faith, but only Roman ecclesiasticism, in what we are about to 
adduce. Nine-tenths of plain, honest Catholic people and 
Catholic priests will be as much horrified as are we to see 
what immorality ecclesiasticism, distorted by long centuries of 
casuistry, can bring itself to teach. Should Church schools be 
allowed, there is no reason why, as fast as American ecclesias- 

1 Father Isaac Hecker. 2 Bishop O'Connor, Pittsburg. 

8 Catholic Review, January, 1852. 

* Eugene Lawrence, Hist. Studies, 1876 ; Dominic and the Inquisition, 358. 

^ Le Maistre's Letters on the Spanish Inquisition, published by Donahoe, Boston, 1843. 

^ Mgr. S^gur : Plain Talk about Protestantism, also published by Donahoe, Boston. R. 
W. Thompson, 81. 

^ " This maxim gave the most unlimited privilege to the popes of breaking all faith of 
treaties which thwarted their interest or passion, — a privilege which they constantly exer- 
cised." — Hallam. 



STATE SCHOOLS AND CHURCH SCHOOLS. 209 

tics can be brought down to it, they may not teach these morals 
from approved standard works. 

Some one may interrupt with the inquiry, Cannot the Romish 
Church now teach what siie chooses ? To which we answer : — 

First, The State is not responsible for what the Church teaches 
in her private sphere ; but the State is responsible for making 
her assistafit teachers of the boys and girls of the republic 
churches which may teach immorality and crime. 

Second, The State is able, in the State, to neutralize the private 
teachings of churches by her own teaching of natural morals. 

We again beg pardon of all noble-minded Catholics at sup- 
posing that they could sit patiently under such teaching as that 
which follows : yet as fair-mi7ided men as any of us have been 
brought down to it ; and there can be little doubt, that, in due 
time, if Church schools were rooted in American soil, just these 
doctrines would be taught in them. 

For we are about to transcribe from standard works. 

Father Joanne Petro Gury, born in 1801, was for thirty-five 
years professor of moral theology at Vals, and afterwards in the 
Collegio Romano. He died in 1866. "No modern treatise," 
says Cartwright,^ " can show a more formidable array of guar- 
antees than Father Gury's ' Compendium of Moral Theology.' It 
has been appointed in Roman-Catholic seminaries in all lands 
as the standard manual of moral theology. It has been printed 
in every country, and translated into every tongue. In the new 
issue of De Backer's ' Dictionary of Jesuit Writers ' there are 
enumerated no fewer than twenty-four editions. The one we 
quote from was issued in 1872 from the presses of the Propa- 
ganda at Rome, — the highest possible voucher for the entire 
approval of every line and every word in the book by the 
supreme representatives of the Roman-Catholic Church. The 
volume on ' Cases of Conscience,' by the same author, is a 
commentary in practical elucidation of the larger work." 

Cartwright undertakes to examine the morals taught in these 
standard Jesuit works. He glances at the whole field in this 
sentence : " Advocate and antagonist alike will admit that the 

>• W. C. Cartwright, M.P. : The Jesuits, their Constitution and Teaching, 



2IO STATE SCHOOLS AND CHURCH SCHOOLS. 

system of lax opinions popularly charged against Jesuit divines 
rests on three cardinal propositions, — of ProbahiUsm^ of Mental 
Reservatioji, and of yiistification of Means by the Endy For a 
full understanding of these subjects, we refer the reader to 
Cartwright's work, " The Jesuits," and Pascal's famous " Pro- 
vincial Letters." We shall get merely a few glimpses of these 
teachings. 

Probabilism is this : " Opiiiio probabilis is any judgment resting 
on some really grave motive, though with fear of the opposite." 
" That means," says Cartwright, " that notwithstanding an irre- 
pressible inward impression that truth is really in opposition to 
a given opinio probabilis^ yet any opinion in behalf whereof 
there can be adduced what is technically termed a 'grave 
motive ' may be safely accepted as full warrant for action." 
" In case of a person unversed in letters, it is enough that he 
can point to a particular opinion as having fallen from any one 
whom ' he himself deems to be possessed of learning and 
insight,' for his confident acceptance of such opinion as a rule 
of action." 

Mental reservation is of two kinds, — " strictly and broadly 
mental." The latter only, Gury considers justifiable. 

The doctrine of Means by End, " notwithstanding their denial, 
has been taught by an unbroken chain of Jesuit divines, of first- 
rank standing, from Busenbaum down to Gury and Liberatore." 

Now we run together in miscellaneous way a few of the cases 
of conscience under these three Jesuit moralities. 

" Can servants who are of opinion that their wages are 
inferior to the work done by them make use of clandestine 
compensation, occulta compensatio ? " asks Gury. " Not generally ; 
but there are exceptions." " Servants who have contracted for 
inadequate wages, under physical constraint, or moral fear, or 
strain of necessity ; such being declared entitled to help them- 
selves to what they deem their rightful due." ^ 

What do Americans think, — all, of whatever religion ? Shall 
we have Church schools, where it should be. even possible for 
the boy in preparation for future citizenship to be thus taught ? 
Yet this is from a standard Jesuit book of morals. • 

1 See. in connection. Pascal's story of Jean d'Albe. 



STATE SCHOOLS AND CHURCH SCHOOLS. 211 

Gury asks, " Can a missionary, for purposes of concealment, 
assume the dress of ministers of a false religion, so that he may 
seem one of them ? " Which is answered in the affirmative : 
" For dresses primarily serve for covering the body, and are 
not merely declaratory signs of some religion." 

A similar instance is given in Pascal's " Letters : " " In the 
Indies and in China they permitted Christians to practise idol- 
atry itself, with the aid of the following ingenious contrivance : 
they made their converts conceal under their clothes an image 
of Jesus Christ, to which they taught them to transfer mentally 
those adorations which they rendered ostensibly to the idols 
Cachinchoam and Keum-fucum."^ 

"It is startling," says Cartwright, "to find it enumerated as 
a principle in the standard handbook for the instruction of 
Roman-Catholic youths in moral obligations, that an oath may 
be repudiated with perfect impunity, if only the person who has 
sworn will plead to having been at the time influenced in his 
mind by some apprehensions of possibly injurious consequences 
to himself, unless he had so sworn." 

Gury says, " An individual sets poison or a snare in a local- 
ity where his enemy, though very rarely, passes, with the 
express intention that he might perish if he should chance to 
come by. A physician applies the degree of attention he is 
bound strictly by his calling to exercise, but, out of hatred, is 
resolved to apply none beyond, in order that the patient's 
death might ensue." "Gury asks whether these men should 
be held guilty of having wrongfully caused death, if this actually 
came about from circumstances prepared with so much deliber- 
ation. His answer is, that, according to the more accredited 
opinion., they should be held exempt from guilt, ' because, on 
the one hand, the external act is not unjust, inasmuch as, in 
human dealings, the mere possibility of another man's injury 
has not to be taken into account : and, on the other hand, an 
internal act is not rendered unjust in virtue of intention ; for 
intention has influence neither for the efficacy of a cause, nor 
for peril of injury. Consequently, the result must be said to 

1 Pascal, who gives authorities, Letter 5. 

\ 



212 STATE SCHOOLS AND CHURCH SCHOOLS. 

have happened by mere accident; and of this an evil intention 
does not change the nature.' " ^ " No one," remarks Cart- 
wriglit, " need ever be disturbed in his conscience as to any 
moral liabilities being consequent on intentions, however wick- 
ed, if these have only been artfully connected with agencies 
of which, by some ingenuity, it could be plausibly pleaded, that, 
in some conceivable contingencies, they might prove harmless.'* 

Gury asks, " Whether you are bound to make any reparation 
for the harm that has befallen another in consequence of your 
unjust deed ; as, for instance, if the theft were imputed to him of 
that which you yourself had stolen ? " And he answers in the 
negative, "Even though you should have expressly striven to 
get your own action imputed to him." The example he gives 
of Qui7'mus fully illustrates the answer. To these strange 
chapters of moral mstriictiofis, so called, we might add similar 
teachings in regard to " hush-money and its extortion," " eva- 
sion of taxes," " smuggling," and underrating the value of prop- 
erty in deeds.^ 

Church schools for the citizen boy ? Never f 

Blaise Pascal's earnest and witty " Provincial Letters " ought 
to be read by all. There all which Gury teaches is abundantly 
illustrated from the Jesuit fathers by citations, of which Pascal 
says, " I have twice read ' Escobar ' throughout ; and, for the 
others, I got several of my friends to read them : but / have 
never used a single passage without having read it myself in the 
hook quoted^ without having examined the case in which it is 
brought forward, and without having read the preceding and 
subsequent context, that I might not run the risk of citing that 
for an answer which was in fact an objection ; which would have 
been very unjust and blamable." 

Take a few bits from Pascal, fair specimens, since we cannot 
cite amply. 

Of probabilism he makes his priest say, who converses with 
him, " Why, sir, it is the foundation, the very A B C, of our 
moral philosophy." 

From Emma?iuel Spa, Jesuit doctor : " A person may do what 

1 Gury, vol. i. 366, 367. 2 See Gury ; Cartwright on Jesuits. 



STATE SCHOOLS AND CHURCH SCHOOLS. 213 

he considers allowable according to a probable opinion, though 
the contrary be the safer one. The opinion of a single grave 
doctor is all that is requisite." 

Vasquez : "On what occasions may a monk lay aside his re- 
ligious habit without incurring excommunication?" — "If he 
has laid it aside for an infamous purpose, such as to pick 
pockets, or to go incognito into haunts of profligacy, meaning 
shortly after to resume -it." 

John d'Alba was servant to the fathers in Clermont College. 
Dissatisfied with his wages, he purloined, and was arrested by 
the fathers. The case came to court April 16, 1647. He con- 
fessed to taking the pewter plates, but maintained he had not 
stolen them : according to the doctrine of his masters, he had 
taken them as occulta compensation clandestine compensation. 
His plea was not allowed : on which Pascal wittily says to his 
interlocutor, that his doctrine satisfies the priests^ but not the 
judges, " In following your probabilities, they are in danger of 
coming into contact with the whip and the gallows. This is a 
sad oversight." 

The doctrine of the Directioji of the l7ite7ition he counts al- 
most equal to probabilism. 

Sanchez : " A man may swear that he never did such a thing, 
— though he actually did it, — meaning within himself that he 
did not do so on a certain day, or before he was born." "And 
this is very convenient," &c. Or he may do this : " After 
saying aloud, / swear that I have not done that, to add in a low 
voice, to-day; or, after. saying aloud I swear, to interpose in a 
whisper, that I say, and then continue, that I have done that.^^ 
There is a remarkable illustration, in Cartwright, of a woman 
who has deceived her husband. 

Escobar (from whom the word escobarderie, meaning dupli- 
city^ : " Promises are not binding, when the person in making 
them had no intention to bind himself." Escobar, further ; 
" We call it killing in treachery when the person who is slain 
had no reason to suspect such a fate. He, therefore, that slays 
his enemy, cannot be said to kill him in treachery, even though 
the blow should be given insidiously, and behind his back." 



214 STATE SCHOOLS AND CHURCH SCHOOLS. 

" He that kills an enemy with whom he was reconciled under a 
promise of never again attempting his life cannot be absolutely 
said to kill in treachery, unless there was between them all the 
stricter friendship." Escobar: "It is lawful to kill an accuser 
whose testimony may jeopard your life and honor." 

Father L'Amy (Fran9ois Amicus) uses these words : " An 
ecclesiastic or a monk may warrantably kill a cfefamer who 
threatens to publish the scandalous crimes of his community 
or his own crimes, when there is no other way of stopping 
him."i 

Father L' Amy's doctrine was censured in 1649 ^7 ^^^ Uni- 
versity of Louvain. " And yet," says Pascal, " two months have 
not elapsed since your Father des Bois maintained this very 
censured doctrine, and taught that ' it was allowable for a monk 
to defend the honor which he had acquired by his virtue, even 
BY KILLING the pcrson who assails his reputation, — etia7n cu7n 
morte invaseris.'' "^ 

" The doctrines advanced by L'Amy are too gross for repeti- 
tion : suffice it to say, that they sanctioned the murder, not only 
of the slanderer, but of the person who might tell tales against 
a religious order ; of one who might stand in the way of another 
enjoying a legacy or a benefice ; and even of one whom a 
priest might have robbed of her honor, if she threatened to rob 
him of his character. These horrid maxims were condemned 
by civil tribunals and theological faculties^'' [observe this, to the 
honor of the nobler Catholics]; "yet the Jesuits persisted in 
justifying them." ^ 

In following out this doctrine, " a Bavarian parish-priest, by 
■name Riembauer, in 1808 murdered his mistress with revolting 
cold-bloodedness, because he feared she would make their 
intimacy public, to the ruin of his position. Being brought to 
trial, Riembauer, who displayed much morbid ingenuity, de- 
fended himself, on the plea that the deed was in strict accord 
with the maxims he had been taught in the seminary, — that 
it was quite lawful to put out of the way any one from whom 

^ Cours Theologique. ^ Letter 13. 

3 Nicole, Latin translator of Pascal's Letters: Notes, iv. '41. 



STATE SCHOOLS AND CHURCH SCHOOLS. 215 

there was reason to dread a ruinous denunciation j and this he 
sustained by extracts from Statler's ^ Ethica Christiana,' at that 
time a standard manual. No doubt, this was an extreme case : 
still that miscreant could appeal with perfect plausibility to 
maxims in divines of authority, which, without any strained 
construction, did seem to justify his deed."^ 

Sanchez, quoting, says, " Navarre justly observes, that, in 
certain mentioned cases, it is lawful either to accept or to send 
a challenge, — licet acceptare et offerre duelhim. The same author 
adds, that there is nothing to prevent one from despatching 
one's adversary in a private way." "By this means we escape 
at once from exposing our life in the combat, and from partici- 
pating in the sin which our opponent would have committed 
by fighting the duel." ^ 

On another matter, the killing for a buffet, "Lessius lays 
it down as a point which no casuist has contested. He quotes 
a great many that uphold, and none that deny it, and particu- 
larly Peter Navarre, who, speaking of affronts in general (and 
there is none more provoking than a box on the ear), declares^ 
that, ' by the universal consent of the casuists, it is lawful to kill 
the calumniator, if there be no other way of averting the affront,. 
— ex sententia omnium^ licet contumeliosum occidere, si alter ea 
injuria arceri neqicity^'^ 

"According to Father Baldelle, quoted by Escobar, 'you may^ 
lawfully take the life of another for saying you have lied, if 
there is no other way of stopping his mouth.' Lessius and He- 
reau agree in the following sentiments : ' If you attempt to ruin, 
my character by telling stories against me in the presence of 
men of honor, and I have no other way of preventing this thani 
by putting you to death, I may, and that even though I have 
been really guilty of the crime which you divulge, provided it is. 
a secret one, which you could not establish by legal evidence. 
And I prove it thus : If you mean to rob me of my honor by 
giving me a box on the ear, I may prevent it by force of arms ;. 
and the same mode of defence is lawful when you would do. me. 

* Cartwright, 224. 

* Sanchez, Moral Theology ; Pascal, Letter 7. 8 Letter 7- 



2i6 STATE SCHOOLS AND CHURCH SCHOOLS. 

the same injury with the tongue. In fine, honor is dearer than 
life ; and, as it is lawful to kill in defence of life, it must be so 
to kill in defence of honor.' " ^ 

On the other hand, observe the Jesuit teachings on uttering 
calumny. In their public theses at Louvain, in 1645, ^^^^Y taught, 
" What is it but a venial sin to calumniate, and forge false 
accusations to ruin the credit of those who speak evil of us ? " 
" Quidni non nisi veniale sit detrahentes auctoritatem magnam, 
tibi noxiam, falso crimine elidere t " Dicastillus defends this 
audaciously. "'There can be no doubt,' says Caramuel, 'that 
it is a probable opinion that we contract no mortal sin. by ca- 
lumniating another in order to preserve our own reputation, 
for it is maintained by more than twenty grave doctors, by 
Gaspard Hurtado and Dicastille, Jesuits, &c. ; so that, were this 
doctrine not probable, it would be difficult to find any one such 
in the whole compass of theology.' " 

Pascal shows the working of this maxim in the daughters 
of the empress, and in a dispute of the Jesuits with M. Puys, 
curate at Lyons, in 1650, whom they calumniated as " scandalous 
from his gallantries." The curate explained that his book was 
not directed against their society. Whereupon Father Alby im- 
mediately addressed him a letter : " Sir, it was in consequence 
of my believing that you meant to attack the society to which I 
.have the honor to belong, that I was induced to take up the pen 
in its defence ; and I considered that the mode of reply which 
I adopted was such as I was permitted to employ. But, on a 
better understanding of your intention, I am now free to declare 
that there is nothing in your work to prevent me from regarding 
you as a man of genius, profound and orthodox in doctrine, and 
irreproachable in manners; in one word, as a pastor worthy of 
your church." ^ 

But why transcribe more .? Is it not enough ? 

Being of mild disposition, we are not accustomed to use severe 
words ; but Carlyle has a rich vocabulary of just such words as 
we feel like using : " Ignatius' black militia, armed with this 
precious message of salvation, has now been campaigning over 

1 Letter 7. 2 Letter 15. 



STATE SCHOOLS AND CHURCH SCHOOLS. 217 

all the world for about three hundred years, and openly or 
secretly has done a mighty work over all the world. Who can 
count what a work ? Where you meet a man believing in the 
salutary nature of falsehoods, or the divine authority of things 
doubtful, and fancying, that, to serve the good cause, he must 
call the Devil to his aid, there is a follower of Unsaint Ignatius." 
" They have given a new substantive to modern languages. The 
word yesuitism now, in all countries, expresses an idea for 
which there was in nature no prototype before." " They have 
done such deadly execution on the general soul of man, and 
have wrought such havoc on the terrestrial and supernal inter- 
ests of this world, as insure to Jesuitism a long memory in 
human annals." " There had been liars in the world before ; " 
" but there was in this of Jesuit Ignatius an apotheosis of falsity, 
a kind of subtle quintessence and deadly virus of lying, the like 
of which had never been seen before." " It is to be hoped one 
is not blind withal to the celebrated virtues that are in Jesuit- 
ism, — to its missionary zeal, its contempt of danger, its scien- 
tific, heroic, and other prowesses, of which there is such cele- 
brating," — " small residue of pearls from such a continent of 
putrid shell-fish." ^ 

But we doubt not attempt will be promptly made by Papists 
to break the force of these overwhelming revelations of Jesuit 
morality. The nail, though deep driven, will be withdrawn, un- 
less clinched. They will say two things : — 

I. These doctrines will never be taught in America. 

To which we reply : Firsts It is sufficient to our argument 
against Church schools, that these morals may be taught in 
them. Second^ They are taught abroad. Gury is a standard. 
" The same maxims which it may have been deemed the shafts 
of Pascal's wit must have banished forever are being inculcated 
at the present day in every Roman-Catholic school, college, and 
seminary where Jesuit doctrine prevails ; and this comprises the 
vast majority."^ Third, In the United States there are, says 
"St. Peter," a Catholic paper in New York (1871), twelve col- 
leges under Jesuit charge, and three hundred Jesuit priests. 

* Carlyle : Jesuitism, Latter-day Pamphlets. 2 Cartwright, 147. 



2l8 STATE SCHOOLS AND CHURCH SCHOOLS. 

The Papist will further strive to break the force of these 
damaging revelations by saying, — 

2. These representations are slanderous and false, exaggerated 
and overstrained ; and they were answered long ago by Father 
Daniel and others. 

To which we make reply : Firsts We do not need to rebut this 
for our argument's sake, since if they may be genuine and 
authoritative, and may be taught to children of the republic, 
that possibility is sufficient to induce the State to anchor fast to 
State schools, and not allow Church schools. But, Second^ The 
pages of Gury are open to all ; they are standard ; they 
contain these Jesuit morals, if not always to such outrageous 
extent as those of two centuries ago, yet such as we have 
just read them. Third, As to Pascal, we have read his avowal 
that he had carefully read his authorities ; and, indeed, he foot- 
notes them. Moreover, we know that one pope at least abol- 
ished the Jesuits, and died with blackened body shortly after.-^ 
The European States, in their days of clearest vision, have 
jealously watched, restrained, or ejected them. " If Pascal's 
solemn deposition, emitted by one whose heart was a stranger 
to deceit, and whose shrewdness placed him beyond the risk of 
delusion, is not accepted as sufficient, we might refer to the 
mass of evidence collected at the time in the Factu77is of the 
cures of Paris and Rouen, to the voluminous notes of Nicole, 
and to the Apology of Petitdidier, in which the citations mad^- 
by Pascal are authenticated with a carefulness which not only 
sets all suspicion at rest, but leaves a large balance of credit in 
the author's favor, by showing, that so far from having reported 
the worst maxims of the Jesuitical school, or placed them in the 
most odious light of which they were susceptible, he has been 
extremely tender towards them. But, indeed, the truth v/as 
placed beyond all dispute, through the efforts of the celebrated 
Bossuet, in 1700, when, by the sentence of an assembly of the 
clergy of France, the morals of the Jesuits, as exhibited in these 
* monstrous maxims which had been so long the scandal of the 
Church and of Europe,' were formally condemned, and when it 

1 Clement XIV. Cartwright: Steinmetz, Hist, of Jesuits, iii. 615. 



STATE SCHOOLS AND CHURCH SCHOOLS. 219 

may be said that the ' Provincial Letters ' met at once their full 
vindication and their final triumph."-^ 

Remember, Catholic fellow-citizen, Church schools will be jfesuit 
schools ; for this is not an extinct and antiquated society, but 
still "the sword whose hilt is on the Tiber," the "janizaries of 
the Papacy." 

Remember, the Propaganda issued an edition of Gury in 
1872. Only about thirty years ago, it was "discovered that the 
theology of Dens was still taught by the Jesuits in Ireland, — a 
collection of the most wicked and obscene maxims of casuisti- 
cal morality." "Dr. Gilly mentions a publication at Lyons, in 
1825, which is so bad, that the reviewer says, ' We cannot, we 
dare not, copy it : it is a book to which the cases of conscience 
of Sanchez were purity itself.' " ^ 

But these are mere casuistic speculations, one imagines. Yet 
" according as a man thinketh, so is he." 

These and similar teachings have not only borne abundant 
fruit, as could be shown, between citizen and citizen, but on a 
large scale, on the page of history, instances gloom forth like 
black columns of smoke. Edward Beecher gives examples : 
" Ladislaus, King of Hungary, formed a treaty with the Sultan 
Amurath, and the king and sultan confirmed it by mutual oaths 
on the Gospels and the Koran. Eugenius IV., the Pope, by his 
legate Julian, declared it in the highest degree criminal to 
observe an oath so much opposed to ^ecclesiastical utility J 'I 
absolve you,' said the legate, * from perjury, and sanctify your 
arms.' ' The Sultan,' writes Edgar, ' it is said, displayed a copy 
of the violated treaty in the front of battle, imploring the pro- 
tection of the God of truth, and called aloud on the prophet 
Jesus to avenge the mockery of his religion and authority.' " 
Ladislaus was defeated and slain. '' An enumeration," says 
Edward Beecher, " of popes and councils, would present at least 
twenty cases of teaching perjury on the great scale, by profess- 
ing to dissolve national oaths." ^ 

1 Thomas M'Crle, D.D., Introduction to Pascal; Vie de Bossuet, iv. 19; Tabaraud, 
Dissertation sur la Foi, &c. 

2 M'Crie, Introduction, Pascal, Ixxv. 

* Edward Beecher, D.D., Papal Conspiracy Exposed. 



220 STATE SCHOOLS AND CHURCH SCHOOLS. 

Are the moral teachings which produced St. Bartholomew's 
Day to be inoculated into the State by her own permission ? 

John Huss, summoned to appear before the council, received 
from the Emperor Sigismund a safe conduct, in the amplest 
words, " to go, to stop, to remain, and to return safely." This 
safe conduct he gave honorably, intending to maintain it. 

" Notwithstanding this safe conduct," says Dackery, an eye- 
witness, in his German history of the council, " the deputation, 
in a long speech, persuaded the emperor, that, by decretal 
authority^ he should not keep faith with a man accused of 
heresy." Huss was burnt. The Council of Constance then 
decreed, " Nor ought any faith or promise to be observed to 
him, to the injury of the Catholic faith, by any law^ natural, 
divine, or human." 

" I'd rather be 

A Pagan, suckled in a creed outworn, 
So might I " 

learn to speak and act the truth. 

Brought up in a far different school was he who said, that, "if 
truth were to be banished from all the world, it ought to have a 
place in the heart of kings ; " or that great Roman, who informed 
the hostile general of his physician's offer to poison him, and the 
Epirote Pyrrhus in admiration exclaimed, " It is easier to turn 
the sun from the heavens than Fabricius from the path of honor;" 
or the Gothic Alaric, when he had taken Rome, " Kill only the 
armed, spare those who have taken refuge in churches ; " or 
Saladin, who at his death bequeathed a large sum of money to 
the poor, whether Mussulman or Christian or Jew, to show that 
all men are brothers ; or the Chevalier Bayard, " sans peur et 
sans reproche," who, dying, looked on the false Constable of 
Bourbon, and said, "It is not /who am an object of commisera- 
tion : it is you^ who are fighting against your king, your country, 
and vour oaths." 

■ The State school, by plain instruction of virtue, teaching 
Sigismund to keep his word ! — rather than Church schools, 
sophisticated, and sophisticating Sigismund into breaking faith 
with his subjects ! 



STATE SCHOOLS AND CHURCH SCHOOLS. 221 

VI. Church schools, finally, may bring up scholars to 

DIVERSE, AND EVEN HOSTILE AND NATIONALLY DESTRUCTIVE, 
POLITICAL IDEAS. 

In the American Revolution the Episcopal schools probably 
taught, "God save the King." What might not have been the 
effect, during our " war of restoration," had the Catholics had 
separate schools, and had the teachers, under instructions from 
the Tiber, chosen to impress on scholars, and through them on 
their parents, that "the Pope has acknowledged the Southern 
Confederacy " ? Would our citizens from across the seas have 
shown such steadfast loyalty and such heroic gallantry for the 
Union ? This is only saying that in a less open, but no less 
potent manner, Jesuitism in politics may be imparted in youth- 
ful instruction ; which both France and Germany having tried, 
spewed it out of their mouth as treason to the State. 

In these Church schools, in the first decade possibly, the ideas 
of Catholics who are not Romanists — Brownson, Doyle, Dol- 
linger — might be imparted. 

But — and here is the argument — these Church schools 
mighty as soon as secluded (and nothing could then prevent 
them), teach all the American youth called Catholic the politi- 
cal ideas of Serbati and Liberatore, and Brownson in his earlier 
years. 

Brownson once said, when more of a Romanist than at the 
ripening of his life, ^^ Either the popes usurped the authority they 
exercised over sovereigns i?i the middle ages, or they possessed it 
by vif^tue of their title as vicars of yesus Christ on earthy " Say 
what we will, we can gain little credit with those we would 
conciliate. Always, to their minds, will the temporal power of 
the Pope by divine right loom up in the distance ; and al- 
ways will they believe — however individual Catholics here 
and there may deny it, or nominally Catholic governments 
oppose it — that it is the real Roman-Catholic doctrine, to be 
re-asserted and acted the moment that circumstances render it 
prudent or expedient. We gain nothing with them but doubts 
of our sincerity." This doctrine "is the most logical, the most 
consonant to Catholic instincts, the most honorable to the dig- 



22 2 STATE SCHOOLS AND CHURCH SCHOOLS. 

nity and majesty of the Papacy; and it has undeniably the 
weight of authority on its side. The principal Catholic authori- 
ties are certainly in favor of the divine right ; and the principal 
authorities which he " (Charles Butler) " is able to oppose to 
them are of parliaments, sovereigns, jurisconsults, courtiers, and 
prelates and doctors who sustained the temporal powers in their 
wars against the popes. The Galilean doctrine was, from the 
first, the doctrine of the courts, in opposition to that of the 
vicars of Jesus Christ, and should, therefore, be regarded by 
every Catholic with suspicion." There spoke Brownson, the 
true Roman Catholic, before he became an American Catholic, 

— American in politics^ while Catholic in faith. 

Is it for the interest of the State that it should allow one- 
third or one-half its youth to be brought up, denying that the 
State is " sovereign," " independent " ? But so Serbati would 
teach, as he taught Hyacinthe, that "civil society has for its 
object, not — like the family in the natural order, the Church in 
supernatural order — the substance of rights, but simply the 
modality of rights ; " that is, that government is merely a use- 
ful police system to guard the family and church, — an iron 
fence, of no value or honor in itself, but only to protect the en- 
closed trees. 

Can the State, safely or honorably to herself, send one-third 
of her youth to have the grand ideas of nationality and citizen- 
ship and loyalty stamped and crushed out of them in a Church 
school 1 

The State, by a system of compulsory education reaching all 
her children, is to insist that all her youth, for a term of years, 

— if not for the whole ten years of their school life, from five to 
fifteen, at least for seven years, from five to twelve, or from 
eight to fifteen, — shall be under her immediate eye and in- 
struction, to receive those moral and political ideas that will fit 
them for their place as citizens in the State, and fellow-citizens 
to each other. 

Suppose Father Liberatore were the State Superintendent of 
Church Schools in Massachusetts : he would order that these 
his words should be taught to the future — shall we say citizens 



STATE SCHOOLS AND CHURCH SCHOOLS. 223 

of America, or to the future subjects of Rome in the provi7tce of 
America 1 "The State," declares Father Liberatore, "must 
understand itself to be a subordinate sovereignty, exercising 
ministerial functions under a separate sovereignty, and govern- 
ing the people conformably to the will of that lord to whom 
it is subject." 

" Church schools " means that one-third of American citizens 
are to be brought up to hold as politics and faith that America 

IS A PROVINCE OF ROME. 



THE "ENGLISH" AND THE "DOUAI.''^ 



By what marvellous lack of sifting and straining must it have 
happened, that a volume in the English language, extant for a 
period of more than quarter of a thousand years, — two centuries 
and a half, or, to give the full time, two hundred and sixty-seven 
years ; a volume which, during that long course of years, had 
received recension and revision many times (near a dozen times 
in England, and two at least in this country) ; ^ a volume pro- 
fessedly a book, — pre-eminently the Book of all books, — at any 
hour, of many millions, and these present millions to be mul- 
tiplied by eight generations, — that this volume, in so late a 
recension as that of 1852 (its latest, we believe), should, at this 
day of schools and universities, retain such remarkable pieces 
of composition as these ? — 

" The Lord ruleth me, and I shall not want He hath set 
me in a place of pasture. He hath brought me up on the water 
of refreshment. He hath converted my soul. He has led me 
on the paths of justice for his own name's sake. 

^ Since scholars disagree practically in writing this name, it may not be thought petty to 
vindicate our spelling by showing the weiglit of authority. Douai, Encyclopedie Moderne, 
Firmin Didot Freres, Printers of the French Institute, Paris, 1853 ; Murray, Handbook of 
France; Encyclopsedias Brittannica and American (latter also, Douay) ; Webster's Diction- 
ary (also Douay) ; English Encyclopjedia of Geography ; McCulloch',s Geographical Dictionary ; 
Lippincott's Pronouncing Gazetteer (or Douay). On the other hand, Doziay, Chambers' 
Encyclopedia; Worcester's Dictionary; Colton's, Johnson's, and Collins' Atlases. The 
weight of authority is thus for Douai ; and it is easier to see how Douai fell into Douay than 
the reverse. The pronunciation is that of Worcester, accented on the first syllable, rather 
than that of Webster, on the last. Doway is a corrupted form, in print or pronunciation, and 
has no good authority. 

2 John G. Shea: Bibliography of Catholic Bibles printed in U.S. 1859.. 
224 



THE ''ENGLISH'" AND THE '' DOUAiy 225 

" For though I should walk in the midst of the shadow of 
death, I will fear no evils ; for thou art with me. Thy rod and 
thy staff, they have comforted me. Thou hast prepared a 
table before me, against them that afiflict me. Thou hast 
anointed my head with oil ; and my chalice which inebriateth 
me, how goodly it is ! And thy mercy will follow me all the 
days of my life. And that I may dwell in the house of the 
Lord unto length of days." j 

And this, in the midst of much that is excellent : — 

" Him, therefore, when Peter had seen, he saith to Jesus, 
Lord, and what shall this man do ? Jesus saith to him. So I 
will have him to remain till I come, what is that to thee ? Fol- 
low thou me. This saying, tlierefore, went abroad among the 
disciples, that that disciple dieth not : but Jesus did not say ta 
him. He dieth not j but. So I will have him remain till I come^ 
what is that to thee ? " 

This volume is entitled the Douai version of the Latin Vul- 
gate, so called. The English reader need not have his atten- 
tion called to the barbarisms and infelicities of diction in his 
vernacular, and the classical reader need not have one point 
out the obvious departures from the sense of the Hebrew Psalm 
and Greek paragraph. 

Astonishing as this English is, which is published and set 
before English readers to-day in the great cities of polite speech 
and writing of our language, unchanged, uncensured, unchal- 
lenged, the explanation is near at hand. This book never was 
sifted, as one would suppose, from its conspicuous position and 
its immense nominal constituency, it must have been. This 
book has, indeed, been placed on the sieve ; but it never was 
sifted. The translation, it is true, was duly made j the recen- 
sions were put forth by ecclesiastics ; they were laid up07t the 
sieve : but the sifting never took place, — the necessary mental 
agitation, the constant, critical, thoughtful reading by millions 
of eager minds, which shakes a translation to sift it like wheat, 
throws aside its crudities, and makes the final product smooth 
and refined, as well as essentially correct. 

To say that this sifting never took place is to say no dispu- 



226 THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE ''DOUAi:'' 

table, and, from the Catholic side, no invidious thing. In the 
commentaries and footnotes, indeed, studied by the learned, 
some of these inaccuracies are remarked ; but they are not set 
in any fresh translation, in the plain text, for the common read- 
ers, even were those readers numerous. If that beautiful Psalm 
were read and repeated from the Douai a hundred thousand 
times a year, — as it probably is from the authorized version, — 
and if there were among us the same freedom in private trans- 
lating as among the Romanists, how long would the words be 
tolerated in print, " My chalice which inebriateth me, how 
goodly it is " ? 

We repeat, it is no disputable or invidious thing to say that 
this Douai version never was thus sifted by universal and 
earnest reading. This is no libel. No general statistics are 
before us from which we can predicate, or even estimate, the 
generalness of Catholic reading of this version ; but one fact 
which has come to our knowledge may, we believe, not unfairly 
be considered as a specimen of the extent to which this book 
is possessed by the common people. Mr. Willey visited nearly 
3,000 Catholic families in Lowell, Mass., of which 1,200 had 
the Douai Bible ; in Lawrence he visited 1,950 Catholic fami- 
lies, in only 515 of v/hich, "a little more than one-fourth of the 
families," did he find the Douai Bible. ^ In New England are few 
Protestant families — persons, we might almost say — who do 
not own a Bible. May it fairly be supposed, also, that pre- 
sumably the same prop07'tion of interest is taken in the reading of 
the Douai version by those who own a copy, the same propor- 
tion as between the large number of those who own an English 
and the small number of those who own a Douai 1 Be this as it 
may, we need not pry into houses, nor demand a census at the 
doors, to find how many, even in American homes, possess the 
Douai Bible, and read it constantly and eagerly. For the fact 
is acknowledged, — nay, it is claimed as a Catholic peculiarity 
and excellence, — that the Bible is not so much to be read by 
the people, but that the religious teachers should study and 
digest it, and present to the people what, in their judgment, it is 

* Report of Massachusetts Bible Society, for 1876. 



THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE ''DOUAir 227 

best for them to learn. This is the common Catholic theory, 
and has been for centuries. Mr. John Shea opens his catalogue 
of Catholic Bibles (1859) by saying, " In the Catholic Church 
the Holy Scriptures do not occupy the same position as in the 
various denominations formed among those who left her bosom 
in the great schism of the sixteenth century. To the Catholic 
the Bible is neither a school-book, a ritual, nor a popular treatise 
on theology : consequently, Bibles are not profusely scattered. 
For reverential perusal and devout meditation a comparatively 
small number of them suffices." 

This is no " private interpretation " of the Catholic idea. So 
early as 1199, the Waldenses were prohibited from reading 
their vernacular version. The Council of Toulouse, in 1229, 
decreed, " Prohibemus ne libros Veteris Testamenti aut Novi 
laici permittantur habere : ne praemissos libros habeant in vul- 
gari translates, arctissime inhibemus," — "We prohibit the laity 
from reading the books of the Old or the New Testament ; and 
we most strictly forbid their possession of them translated into 
the vernacular." In 1234 the Council of Tarragona anathema- 
tized as " heretic any one who within eight days should not 
give up a Bible owned by him." The Council of Trent decreed 
that " no man may read the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue 
unless he have obtained permission from the bishops and in- 
quisitors." 

Leo XII., in his bull as late as 1824 against Bible societies, 
prohibited Bible-reading. Bellarmine, in one of his six argu- 
ments against vernacular translations, says that " it is danger- 
ous for the people to read the Scriptures. All heresies have 
sprung from misunderstanding of the Scriptures." Molanus, 
royal And Papal censor of books, says, "We deny that the 
study of the Scriptures is required of laymen; yea, we affirm 
that they are safely debarred the reading of the Scriptures, and 
that it is sufficient for them to govern the tenor of their life by 
the directions of the pastors and doctors of the church." ^ 

Cardinal Ximenes says, " The word of God should be wrapped 
in discreet mystery from the common people, who have little 

^ Practical Theology. 



228 THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAiy 

reverence for what is plain and obvious." "The Scriptures 
should be confined to the three sacred languages symbolically 
written on the cross." And the Douai translators, in their pref- 
ace, wrote, " They do not publish it upon an erroneous opinion 
of its being necessary that the Holy Scriptures should always 
be in our mother-tongue, or that they ought to be read indiffer- 
ently of all, or could be easily understood of every one that 
reads or hears them in a known language. . . . But they trans- 
lated the sacred book upon special considerations of the present 
time, state, and condition of their country," &c. In a Catholic 
bookstore, you will observe the small number of Bibles as 
compared with the costly and elegant "manuals " and "prayer- 
books." Bibles were printed by individual publishers, at the 
limited numbers possible to them, until so late as 1869 ; since 
which time they are also issued by a Catholic publication society. 

The Romanists did indeed, in the early years, co-operate in 
the printing and circulating of Bibles in Germany and Hun- 
gary j but this happy work, foreign to the Papal genius, — 
though, we are willing to believe, germane to many Catholic 
hearts, — was of short duration ; for it was nipped in the bud as 
by cruel frost, the society at Presburg and that at Ratisbon 
being summarily abolished about 18 17 by Papal bull. The 
Russian autocrat stamped out the Russian Bible Society in 
1826. 

To us it sounds melancholy as the booming of the bittern, 
the complaint which Cardinal Wiseman makes, somewhat too 
facilely, of the lack of biblical studies among Papists: "The 
appearance of any work upon biblical literature is, unfortu- 
nately, a phenomenon amongst us." "We are utterly unpro- 
vided with even elementary and introductory works upon the 
Scriptures," " whether intended for the education of our clergy, 
or the instruction of our people : we possess not a commentary 
suited to the wants of the times or the advances made in bibli- 
cal science ; and are obliged to seek information either in 
voluminous, rare, and old writers, or in the productions of men 
whose religion differs essentially from ours."^ Geddes, nearly 

1 Essays, 1836, i. 74. 



THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAi:' 229 

a hundred years ago, complained that Catholic England had no 
Bible. 

D'Aubigne well represents the two extremes of the Papal 
Church in setting before us two facts. " Catholic Christians, 
those of Port Royal, during the age of Louis XIV., wrote these 
beautiful and touching words : ' To forbid Christians the read- 
ing of the Scriptures, and especially the gospel, is to deprive 
children of light and life, and place them in a sort of excommu- 
nication.' The Pope hurled against them the bull ' Unigenitus.' " 

On the other hand, " I was in Rome in 1843. Gregory XVI., 
predecessor of Pius IX., who occupied the Papal throne, had 
upon his accession pronounced against the modern times. He 
had even interdicted railroads. But he had done still more, 
and thousands of people had been thrown into prison. A little 
after, he published a brief against the Bible societies and the 
reading of the Bible. This was not very needful at Rome. If 
one had ransacked all the bookstores, he would not have dis- 
covered in them a single copy of the Holy Scriptures in Italian. 
The Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans was not to be found in 
Rome itself. Verily, the time is far away when Bossuet could 
say that Rome was more proud of one letter of St. Paul than of 
all her triumphs. The Romans read not in the mother-tongue 
the epistle which St. Paul addressed to their ancestors. It is 
read by thousands, by millions, in the valleys of Switzerland, 
upon the banks of the Elbe and the Rhine, beside the Thames, 
in the highlands and the plains of Scotland, along the shores of 
the Atlantic and the Ohio. It is not read — strange fact ! — on 
the banks of the Tiber, whither yet it was sent by Paul." 

How significant is the striking contrast, that for seventy-three 
years (since 1804) the British Bible Society, and since 18 16 the 
American Bible Society (and in 1870 it was reckoned that there 
were somewhere near thirteen thousand societies, auxiliaries 
and branches, in both hemispheres), have been pouring forth 
Bibles for the multitudes of the earth ; in 1846 and 1847 alone, 
sending out nearly 3,000,000 copies of the Scriptures, and in all 
tliese years more than 100,000,000 copies of God's word ! But 



230 THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAir 

the Douai Bible has never had the sifting of such a multitude of 
eager and intelligent readers. 

In the inevitable connection of these two versions — rival 
versions as (considering their constituency only) they may be 
called — with the school-question for the next quarter of a cen- 
tury or less, — if happily by God's favor to us as a nation that 
question may be settled so soon in a safe and satisfactory and 
statesmanlike way, — we find the occasion to set forth a compari- 
son of these two famous translations. 

The thought which we would meet — an indistinct thought, 
working mischief from its very indistinctness — is this: You 
speak of reading the Bible in the schools. But which transla- 
tio?i 1 Each sect claims to have the best : therefore^ to avoid the 
strife and irritation of discussion^ let us have 7ieither. 

But we say, Have either^ or both : both are good transla- 
tions of the revered book, as like as any two translations of 
any classic ; yet one is superior to the other on scholarly 
grounds, and vindicates its claim to be considered the " English 
version." 

There is, therefore, no reason to put the Bible out of the 
schools from mere impatience of thought at deciding what to 
do about rival versions. 

Our attempt will be to present such a view of the versions as 
shall approve itself to scholarly minds as a clear though brief 
account of the two volumes, and may remain in hand, easily re- 
ferred to, during the time of this agitation, as a satisfactory his- 
tory and criticism of the " English " and the " Douai ; " while, on 
the other hand, we will endeavor to make the discussion as 
little abstruse as careful scholarship will permit, and set the two 
versions in a plain and candid light before the intelligent gen- 
eral reader who desires information. 

Nearly a hundred years ago, Alexander Geddes, the most 
learned scholar among the Catholics, speaks of the Douai as a 
" barbarous translation made at Rheims and Douai from an un- 
corrected copy of the Vulgate.'' -^ 

This remark of Geddes suggests the two lines of study which 
will present us with a clear and sufficiently full idea of the 

* Address to the Public, 3. 



THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAiy 231 



DOUAI VERSION. 

First, " an uncorrected copy of the Latin Vulgate ; " second, 
''a barbarous translation made at Rheims." 

(i.) First ^ the history of the Latin Vulgate. This we cannot 
better give than by a condensation of the learned, critical, elab- 
orate, and voluminous article in Smith's " Bible Dictionary " on 
the Latin Vulgate, from Westcott's pen.-^ We assume a suffi- 
cient interest in the subject, or desire for information on our 
reader's part, to follow some details of the narrative of this ver- 
sion. 

" The history of the earliest Latin version of the Bible," he 
says, " is lost in complete obscurity. All that can be affirmed 
with certainty is that it was made in Africa. During the first 
two centuries, the Church of Rome, to which we naturally look 
for the source of the version now identified with it, was essen- 
tially Greek. The Roman bishops bear Greek names ; the 
earliest Roman liturgy was Greek ; the few remnants of the 
Christian literature of Rome are Greek." Tertullian " distinctly 
recog'iizes the general currency in Africa of a Latin version of the 
New Testament in the last quarter of the second century." " But, 
while the earliest Latin version was preserved unchanged in 
North Africa," — in the churches, that is, of which Carthage 
was the centre, — "it fared differently in Italy. There the pro- 
vincial rudeness of the version was necessarily more offensive." 
" Thus in the fourth century a definite ecclesiastical recension 
(of the Gospels at least) appears to have been made in North 
Italy by reference to the Greek." Augustine makes this plain. 

"The Itala appears to have been made with some degree of 
authority: other revisions were made for private use." "The 
next stage in the deterioration of the text was the intermixture 
of these various revisions : so that, at the close of the fourth cen- 
tury, the Gospels were in such a state as to call for that final 
recension which was made by Jerome." It is to be borne in 
mind — what even the scholar familiar with it is apt to let slip 
from his field of vision — that every new copy of the Scriptures 

1 Vulgate, 3451-3482. 



23^ THE ^^ENGLiSH'' And the ^' DOUAI.^' 

was separately done by hand of man. There was no stereotype 
to throw off a hundred thousand copies, nor even common type 
to print an edition of Bibles, each, by necessity of common ori- 
gin, word for word, and letter for letter, exactly like the other ; 
but each new copy was substantially a new and various edition. 
This, of course, was a constantly growing evil. 

"In the crisis of danger, the great scholar was raised up," 
continues Westcott, "who probably alone for fifteen hundred 
years possessed the qualifications necessar}' for producing an 
original version of the Scriptures for the use of the Latin 
churches. jferome (Eusebius Hieronymus) was born in 329 
A.D. at Stridon in Dalmatia, and died in Bethlehem in 420 
A.D. From his early youth he was a vigorous student, and age 
removed nothing from his zeal. Jerome went to Rome A.D. 
382, probably at the request of Damasus the Pope. His active 
biblical labors date from this epoch. These were threefold. 
They are worthy of a somewhat detailed account, — the revision 
of the Old Latin Version of the New Testament, the revision 
of the Old Latin Version (from the Greek) of the Old Testa- 
ment, the new version of the Old Testament from the Hebrew," 

Coming to these labors, Jerome found no easy task before 
him. " There were almost as many forms of text as copies," 
says Jerome, "tot sunt exemplaria pene quot codices." "Mis- 
takes had been introduced ' by false transcription, by clumsy 
corrections, and by careless interpolations ; ' and, in the confu- 
sion which had ensued, the one remedy was to go back to the 
original source. (Graeca Veritas, Graeca origo.) The Gospels 
had naturally suffered most. Jerome therefore applied himself 
to these first." " But his aim was to revise the old Latin, not to 
make a new version." 

" His second work was the revision of the Old Testament 
from the Septuagint Greek. He revised the Psalter by the 
Greek ; but the work was not very complete or careful." This 
revision was called " The Roman Psalter," and was used in the 
Roman Church till 1566. In a short time he produced a new 
revision, which has been called " The Galilean Psalter." The 
same has been used in the Romish churches since 1566. " From 



THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE "DOUAiy 233 

the second (Galilean) revision of the Psalms, Jerome appears 
to have proceeded to the revision of the other books of the 
Old Testament ; restoring all, by the help of the Greek, to a gen- 
eral conformity to the Hebrew." 

But, the longer one proceeds with labors of revision, the more 
conscious does he generally become that he must begin de novo ; 
must translate, instead of revise. This became so apparent to 
Jerome, that, in the growing sense of what should be done, he 
% counted his revisions as entirely inadequate. With the love of 
thoroughness which is part of a true scholar, he made prepara- 
tions for radical work. Jerome commenced tlie study of He- 
brew when he was already in middle life — at the age of forty- 
five, in the year A.D. 374 — with "excessive zeal." It was an 
age when there were no Hebraists, when every thing Jewish was 
hateful, when Jerome exposed himself to censure for his unex- 
ampled resort to Hebrew teachers. But, with the sagacity and 
insensibility of a great scholar, he sequestered himself to the very 
heart of Judaism to learn Hebrew. At Bethlehem, the very 
birthplace of his Lord, as he must often have reflected, whither 
the wise men had brought their offerings of homage, he com- 
menced his version, which was issued book by book, beginning 
391 A.D. " The Books of Samuel and Kings were issued first." 
" The work was executed with the greatest care." Jerome 
speaks of the translation as the result of constant revision, — 
" crebrius vertendo et emendando soUicitius." " The whole 
translation was spread over a period of about fourteen years, 
from the sixtieth to the seventy-sixth year of Jerome's life. But 
still parts of it were finished in great haste." " The three 
Books of Solomon were translated in 398 in three days, when 
he had just recovered from a severe illness." 

His version, after the clamor of ignorance passed away, was 
received in succeeding centuries with great and increasing fa- 
vor, and it has continued in the Roman Church the object of 
the most profound veneration. 

A word of critical estimate is in place here. " Jerome him- 
self admits from time to time that he had fallen into error. In 
many places he gives renderings which he prefers to those 



234 THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAV 

which he had adopted." "Yet," continues Westcott, "such de- 
fects are trifling when compared with what he accompHshed suc- 
cessfully. The work remained for eight centuries the bulwark 
of Western Christianity ; and, as a monument of ancient linguis- 
tic power, the translation of the Old Testament stands unri- 
valled and unique. It was at least a direct rendering of the 
original, and not the version of a version." " Generally it may 
be said that the scriptural idioms of our common language 
have come to us mainly through the Latin." "The vast power ^ 
which they have had in determining the theological terms of 
Western Christendom can hardly be overrated. By far the 
greater part of the current doctrinal terminology is based on 
the Vulgate, and, as far as can be ascertained, was originated in 
the Latin version. Predestination, justification, sanctification, 
salvation, mediator, regeneration, revelation, propitiation, first 
appear in the old Vulgate. Grace, redemption, election, recon- 
ciliation, satisfaction, inspiration, scripture, were devoted there 
to a new and holy use. Sacrament and communion are from 
the same source ; and, though baptism is Greek, it comes to us 
fr(5m the Latin." "The Latin versions have left their mark 
upon both our language and our thoughts." " The study of the 
Vulgate, however much neglected, can never be neglected with 
impunity. It was the version which alone they knew who 
handed down to the reformers the rich stores of mediaeval wis- 
dom ; the version with which the greatest of the reformers 
were most familiar, and from which they had drawn their ear- 
liest knowledge of divine truth." 

" But the Latin Bible which thus passed gradually into use 
under the name of Jerome was a strangely composite work." 
" Thus the present Vulgate, including the Apocrypha, contains 
elements which belong to every period and form of the Latin 
version, — (i) unrevised Old Latin ; (2) Old Latin revised from 
the Septuagint (the Psalter) ; (3) Jerome's free translation from 
the original (Judith, Tobit) ; (4) Jerome's translation from the 
original Old Testament (except the Psalter) ; (5) Old Latin re- 
vised from Greek MSS. (Gospels) ; (6) Old Latin cursorily 
revised (the remainder of the New Testament)." 



THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAir 235 

The condition of the Vulgate, therefore, in its best estate, 
was this, — that all the Old Tesfajnejit, with tlie important ex- 
ception of the Psalms, is the noblest work of the master-hand of 
Jerome, his direct translation in free and noble Latin from the 
Hebrew original ; albeit he afterwards " in many places gives 
renderings which he prefers to those which he adopted, and 
admits from time to time that he had fallen into error." The 
Gospels, too, are from the hand of the master, — a secondary 
though valuable work, — his revision of the old Latin by refer- 
ence to the best Greek manuscripts. The rest of the New Tes- 
tament did not receive his best labor, only a cursory revision. 
His direct work of inaking a version is limited to the Old Testa- 
ment, — the Psalms, unfortunately, excepted. Geddes, whose 
opinions as the great and candid Catholic scholar we have 
frequent occasion to transcribe, says, — referring, I suppose, not 
to Jerome's portion of the work, which he elsewhere extols, but 
to the whole composite, party-colored volume, — "The great 
defect of Jerome's version is its want of uniformity : it being 
sometimes strict, and sometimes loose ; now barbarously literal, 
and now widely paraphrastic. Every translation made from it, 
then, must partake of this variet)^" 

But the Vulgate, as it was soon called, did not remain station- 
ary, even the noble work of Jerome. " Meanwhile the text of 
the different parts of the Latin Bible was rapidly deteriorating. 
The simultaneous use of the old and new versions necessarily 
led to great corruptions of both texts." Then followed revis- 
ions, among them those of Alcuin, 802 ; the Complutensian by 
Cardinal Ximenes, 1517 j that of Stephens, 1528; and others. 
Later, after the Council of Trent had been apprised that the 
text was " so corrupt that only a pope could settle it," came 
the Sixtine by Pope Sixtus V., in 1590, which he solemnly de- 
clared perpetual. But hardly was he in his grave when his 
anathemas were disregarded, and his edition, so full of errors, 
was set aside, and the Clementine revision was substituted. 
Such was the imperfect state of the Vulgate, itself originally 
a work not all Jerome's, very far from being of equal merit. 
How much more imperfect — before the thorough revision by 



236 THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAir 

Sixtus and Clement, at the time of the report to the Tridentine 
Council, that '' the corrupted text could only be restored by a 
pope " — must the unemended Vulgate have been ! Yet, as 
we shall see, it was at this period of a corrupted text that the 
Douaists took the Vulgate in their hands still further to deterio- 
rate and degrade it by rendering it into barbarous English. 

(2.) The Doiiai Translation. This Latin Vulgate, with all the 
faults of its origin, with all the errors of transcription of eleven 
centuries, — for this was only the dawn of printing, — gathered 
into it, and with the text as yet substantially unemended, — 

" Even in the blossoms of its sin, 
With all its imperfections on its head, 
unaneled," — 

was in the hands of Gregory Martin and his two compeers 
about 1575, twelve years before Pope Sixtus undertook the re- 
vision of a " text so corrupt that only a pope could correct it ; " 
and in this deteriorated condition it was made the basis of the 
present Romish version.-^ Dr. Alexander Geddes, the learned 
Catholic scholar, gives the following account of this transla- 
tion : " From the days of Wycliffe there was no version made 
from the Vulgate until the year 1582, when the English Catho- 
lics, who had, in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign, 
taken refuge in Flanders, and were now removed to Rheims on 
account of the war, published a translation of the New Testa- 
ment only. The publication of the Old Testament did not take 
place till after the return to Douai, in 1609. Hence the whole 
version is known by the name of the Douai Bible. It is a lit- 
eral and barbarous translation from the Vulgate before its last 
revision. Their residence in a foreign country, and what they 
deemed a cruel exile from their own, had corrupted the transla- 
tors' language, and soured their tempers."^ 

Westcott says, " The Rhemish Bible, like Wycliffe's, lies prop- 
erly outside the line of English Bibles, because it is a second- 

1 Gregory Martin, " an excellent linguist," the principal translator, his death hastened by 
his excessive toil ; William Allen (Cardinal) ; Richard Bristow ; "men of no small erudition," 
says Dr. Eadie, "but thorough devotees of Rome." Thomas Worthington is said to have 
assisted. John Reynolds also assisted. 

2 Prospectus, 109. 



THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE ''DOUAir 237 

ary translation, based upon the Vulgate." " Such translations 
as these have no claim to be considered vernacular renderings 
of the text : except through the Latin, they are unintelligible."^ 

Nothing can be more certain than that it is not the noblest 
work of scholarship to make a translation of a translation. 

But this the Douaists did, and not, as appears, from lack of 
knowledge of the original, but upoji principle^ for reasons stated 
in the preface. They alleged especially that the originals had 
been more corrupted by Jew and Byzantine than the Vulgate had 
been ; so that the Vulgate was even better than the originals. 

Lest we should seem to imply that we think the Rhemish 
translators utterly absurd, and wanting in extenuation for their 
course, we transcribe what Westcott calls their " very interest- 
ing and ingenious defence of their method: " — 

" We translate the old Vulgate Latin text, not the common 
Greek text, for these causes : (i) It is so ancient, that it was 
used in the Church above thirteen hundred years ago (1609) ; (2) 
It is that, by all probability, which St. Jerome afterward correct- 
ed, according to the Greek, by the appointment of Damasus the 
Pope; (3) Consequently it is the same which St. Augustine so 
commendeth ; (4) It is that which, for the most part ever since, 
hath been used in the Church's service ; (5) The Holy Council 
of Trent, for these and many other important considerations, 
hath declared and defined this only of all other Latin transla- 
tions to be authentical ; (6) It is the gravest, sincerest, of 
greatest majesty, least partiality, as being without all respect of 
controversies, specially those of our time ; (7) It is so exact 
and precise according to the Greek, that delicate heretics there- 
fore reprehend it of rudeness ; (8) The adversaries themselves, 
namely Beza, prefer it before all the rest ; (9) In the rest there 
is such diversity and discussion, and no end of reprehending 
one another, and translating every man according to his fancy, 
that Luther said, ' If the world should stand any long time, we 
must receive again ' (which he thought absurd) ' the decrees of 
councils for preserving the unity of faith, because of so diverse 
interpretations of the Scripture;' (10) It is not only better 

* English Bible, 334. 



238 THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAir 

than all other Latin translations, but than the Greek text itself 
in those places where they disagree." 

Now, it so happens that all scholarship is against them, both 
as to facts and as to the true theory of translation, — all schol- 
arship, that is, which is not overborne by ecclesiastical authority, 
or the profound veneration which the nobler parts of the Vul- 
gate have excited in those brought up from childhood to this 
grand version, or those whose sensibilities (as were those of 
one whom I once knew) are so peculiarly alive to the sono- 
rousness and majesty of the old Roman language, that nothing 
on earth is comparable to it ; nay, as this man used to declare, 
that to his mind the Latin must be the language of the celes- 
tials. Universal scholarship — and the biblical scholars of this 
day, in addition to the rich inheritance of wisdom which they 
hold from the past centuries, are themselves men of great criti- 
cal discernment and clear good sense — is decided that any first- 
rate translation is to be primary^ not secondary ; that is, is to base 
itself upon the original corrected to date^ and is to avail itself to 
the fullest extent of all versions as auxiliary. " The very idea," 
says Geddes, " of translating from a translation is a strange 
idea. We have an excellent French version of Plutarch, by 
Amyot ; but would any Englishman sit down to translate Plu- 
tarch through the medium gf Amyot's translation ? " " In the 
very first transfusion from one idiom to another, some part of 
the author must necessarily evaporate : how much more must 
he lose on a second or third operation ! " ^ 'Tis an Italian pun, 
Iraduttori, traditori, "Translators, traitors," "who do not ren- 
der, but surrender, their author's meaning." Thrupp'^ speaks of 
the means and aids to translation in this order, — "manuscripts, 
versions, and citations." " The first are peculiarly liable to 
errors from transcription. The last two are liable to this cause 
of corruption, and also to others." " Some uses of the article 
and of prepositions cannot be expressed or distinguished with 
certainty in translations. Glosses or marginal additions are 
more likely to pass into the text in the process of translation 

^ Prospectus, 105. 

2 Art. Old Testament in Smith's Dictionary. 



THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAir 239 

than in that of transcription." " The mutually corrective power 
of the three kinds of testimony is of the highest value." 

These are fair specimens of the opinions of scholars, which 
entirely agree with what the general reader at first thought 
would suppose, — that the prime resource of a translator should be 
directly to the volume in its original form. " Graeca Veritas, 
Graeca origo," is evermore the true starting-point of the trans- 
lator. No fault would be found with the Douai, if it modestly 
acknowledged its inferiority ; if, like Wycliffe's Bible, it went to 
the Vulgate because the scholarship of the day did not permit 
it to go farther, or from veneration, or from the novelty of 
launching — as even Wycliffe had not clone — into the broad 
sea of original translation. But such translation cannot be 
defended on theory as giving promise of the superlative trans- 
lation. " The only plausible reason," says the Catholic writer 
already quoted, " that can be offered for translating from the 
Latin, rather from the originals, is, that, the Vulgate having been 
once adopted as the public Latin version, uniformity seemed to 
require that all vernacular versions should be consonant there- 
to." ^ But that a Catholic, in the opinion of her intelligent 
men, does not become a heretic in retaining his scholarship, 
and his scholarly opinion that versions should be based on the 
originals, and not on the Vulgate, Geddes shows, both in his 
own version, so far as completed, made from the Hebrew, and 
in the examples he adduces : for he did not conceive himself 
to be less a Catholic because he founded his translation on the 
original rather than on the Vulgate ; and he says, "But although 
the Catholics in general have made their vernacular versions of 
the Bible from the Vulgate, yet they have not done so without 
exception. Two Italian translations are professedly made from 
the originals. In France there are two complete manuscript 
versions of the whole Bible." ^ 

As to facts, the plea of the Douaists is no more conclusive. 
"The conclusions were by no means fairly deducible," says 
Geddes, " that, because the Hebrew was in many places cor- 
rupted where the Vulgate was not, therefore the Vulgate was 

^ Prospectus, 104. * Prospectus, iii. 



240 THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE ''DOUAV 

everywhere preferable to the Hebrew text. This absurd opin- 
ion," &c., " St. Jerome and St. Augustine denied, that the Jews 
corrupted the Hebrew." He uses the expression, " The won- 
derful uniformity of all the Hebrew manuscripts, and the perfect 
agreement with the printed copy." " There is every reason," 
says Thrupp, " to believe that in Palestine the text was both 
carefully preserved and scrupulously respected. The boast of 
Josephus,^ that, through the ages that had passed, none had 
ventured to add to, or take away from, or to transpose aught of, 
the sacred writings, may well represent the spirit in which, in 
his day, his own countrymen acted." " In the translations of 
Aquila and the other Greek interpreters, the fragments of whose 
works remain to us in the Hexapla, we have evidence of the 
existence of a text differing but little from our own ; so, also, in 
the Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan ; so, also, in Origen's 
transcription of the Hebrew text." " And yet more important 
are the proofs of the establishment of the text, and of substan- 
tial indemnity with our own, supplied by the translation of 
Jerome." 

If it may not be affirmed that the Vulgate unrevised, which the 
men of Douai had in their hands, was as much corrupted from 
its original as the Greek text was corrupted from its original, — 
and we are by no means prepared even to withdraw this hypoth- 
esis, — of this, at least, we think no one could make question, 
that, if we may put it in this algebraic way, the corruption of 
the Vulgate from its original, p/us the departure and variation 
of the original Vulgate from the evangelistic, and especially the 
apostolic Greek, placed the Vulgate of the Douai period at a 
very much farther distance from the primal Greek of the evan- 
gelists than the mere errors of transcription had placed the 
Greek manuscripts. With all the exceeding merits of the Vul- 
gate, it must never be forgotten that its Psalms and Testament 
— precisely what we prize most, and bind together as the 
" finest wheat " of the Scriptures — are not the best work of 
Jerome. 

Then, again, — for we think it useful to dwell a moment further, 

1 Contra Apion, i. 8. 



THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE ''DOUAir 241 

that this claim of the Douaists in regard to the Vulgate as the 
proper starting-point and basis of translation may now and here 
receive final disposition, — it cannot now be doubted that the 
various Greek manicscripts^ gathered from all climes, East and 
West, whither Christianity was scattered, would in their colla- 
tion afford a better basis for a perfect text than the Vulgate, 
even after recension. The discovery of that ancient Greek 
manuscript by Tischendorf, in Mt. Sinai's convent, sent a great- 
er thrill of delight into scholars' hearts everywhere than if he 
had found three manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate. 

Once more : the numerous versions comhi7ied plus the Greek 
manuscripts are immeasurably more trustworthy than the Vul- 
gate, even though we had it fresh from Jerome's hand and final 
touch. We have the Greek manuscripts — themselves vastly 
transcending the Vulgate in power to represent the primitive 
Greek — plus three Syriac, the Coptic, Ethiopic, Gothic, and 
other independent versions. The Vulgate ranks as one of these 
versions, — one of the best ; some would say absolutely the best 
of these versions, — but only one. From these, using the manu- 
scripts as basis, and the versions as auxiliary, scholars are wont 
to reform the text. This is the method of Lachmann, Gries- 
bach, Tischendorf. Never would an unbiassed scholar make the 
Vulo^ate the foundation text to be corrected bv Greek manu- 
scripts and versions. If the illustration be not too abstruse : 
Given, on the one hand, a pitcher of a liquid which appears to 
have been red and blue exposed to the air ; on the other hand, 
Given a pitcher of some liquid which appears to have been red, 
yet which has been changed by exposure to the atmosphere ; given 
several pitchers of the same liquid mixed mechanically with 
yellow, indigo, and the other rainbow colors ; and from all these, 
by observing the red scarcely changed, and by thorough knowl- 
edge of the laws of mixture and reduction of colors, a nearer 
approximation would be made to the original color than by 
a study and reduction of the one pitcher of red mingled more 
or less — we know not how much — with a blue color. The 
stream of the. Vulgate, flowing in one language, and that the 
ecclesiastical language of all Western Europe, it might ^e 



242 77/^5" ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAir 

thought that its departures from purity might be readily traced ; 
and yet, on the other hand, it is far more advantageous to trace 
a considerable number of streams, not quite so observable in 
their course, in search for the elements which they derived in 
common from the fountain of their origin. Better study all the 
independent versions for the original sentences than any one 
version, even were it of great excellence. 

To this it must be added, — a consideration not to be forgotten, 
— that one of these versions, at least, claims an equality, if not 
a superiority, to the Vulgate. The Gothic version made by 
their bishop Ulphilas, whose history is so remarkable, is of 
value. "The Memphitic and Thebaic are among the first of the 
aids to sacred criticism ; " ^ but the earliest Syriac version is of 
exceeding importance. One need only read the remarks in 
Murdock's translation of this version, called the " Peshito," 
to see this. " The great value of this translation," says Mur- 
dock,^ " depends on its high antiquity, — it is ascribed to the 
first ce?ttiiry, some say to apostolic times, — on the competence and 
fidelity of the translators, and on the near affinity of its lan- 
guage to that spoken by our Lord and his apostles. In these 
respects it stands prominent among the numerous versions of 
the New Testament. To give the substance of wdiat is written, 
and in the plainest, simplest manner possible, seems to be its 
sole aim. In these respects it stands alone among all the 
ancient versions of the Bible." "The true import of the New 
Testament," says Ludovicus de Dieu, " can scarcely be learned, 
except from the Syriac." The Vulgate, then, even at its best, — 
even supposing that modern scholarship would detract some- 
what from Murdock's estimate of the Syriac (Scrivener^ and 
Westcott* abate little or nothing from Murdock's valuation of 
the Syriac), — has a rival, and perhaps a superior, in this trans- 
lation, made, as some suppose, in Antioch. 

One conspicuous defect, finally, the Latin language has, known 
to all scholars, which alone of itself must needs put any Latin 

^ Scrivener, Six Lectures, 96. 2 Appendix, 497. 

8 Six Lectures on New Testament, 1875, 92. 
* Canon of New Testament, 213. 



THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAir 243 

version of any Greek book far below the Greek original as a 
basis for translations into other languages, — the conspicuous 
defect of the absence of the article in the Roman tongue. Every 
one must feel what a mutilation of the book, — in itself, and as 
a basis for translations, — as to the exactness and niceties of 
expression, must take place by expunging every article in the 
New Testament and the Old. Stuart says, " The eloquence of 
Cicero and all his power over language could not enable him 
to translate adequately and fully into his own mother-tongue 
the simple words 01 aetoi." 

" In many cases the relative meaning of words is entirely 
changed by the presence or absence of the article." Middleton 
speaks of the article as a " part of speech on which the mean- 
ing as well as the elegance of so large a portion of Greek com- 
position must evidently depend." 

Middleton's work on the Article,^ now too rare, is deserving 
attention. He commences his preface, " The student in the- 
ology cannot have failed to remark that the exposition of vari- 
ous passages of the New Testament is, by commentators, made 
to depend on the presence or the absence of the article in the 
Greek original." ^ " Michaelis has well observed that ' the 
difference even of an article must not be neglected in collatinof 
a MS.' " "Hints tending to prove the importance of the sub- 
ject may be traced even in the writings of the fathers. In 
Justin, in Irenaeus, in Clement of Alexandria, in Origen, in 
Athanasius, in Epiphanius, in Chrysostom, and in Theophylact, 
we find that stress is sometimes laid on the article as prefixed 
to particular words ; and a Latin father, Jerome, remarking on 
Gal. v. 18, that 'spirit' is there anarthrous " (without the article), 
"adds, 'Quae quidem minutiae magis inGraecaquam in nostra 
lingua observatae (qui aQd-ga penitus non habemus) videntur 
aliquid habere momenti,' " — " These minutiae, indeed, observed 
more in Greek than in our language, — for we have no articles 
at all, — seem to be of considerable importance."^ 

Several interesting cases Middleton mentions of the impor- 

1 Thomas Fanshaw Middleton, Bishop of Calcutta: Doctrine of the Greek Article. 1808. 

2 P. xxxix. 3 Preface, xl. 



244 TH^ ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAir 

tant use of the article : as, " The word nvzvyiaL is employed, by 
eminence, to denote the Great and Pre-eminent Spirit ; and in 
this acceptation it is worthy of remark, that Ttvsvixa, or Ttvavjxa 
ayiov, is never anarthrous, except, indeed, in cases where other 
terms, confessedly the most definite, lose the article." " In the 
passages which, from their ascribing personal acts to the 7tv£v(ia 
dyiov, are usually adduced to prove the personality of the Blessed 
Spirit, the words Tfpavfia and ajiov invariably have the article." ^ 
On the contrary, Luke xi. 13, " How much more shall your 
Father give holy spirit to them that ask him ; " ^ for which, ac- 
cordingly, the Greek scholiast has x^Q^^ itveviAaxii^v, "spiritual 
grace." Another interesting case is Luke xviii. 13, tqj dfjLaQTcolm, 
''■the sinner," whether you say with Wetstein, "ro3 habet empha- 
sin," " the chief of sinners," or with Middleton, " The article 
here marks the assumption of its predicate : " and the strict mean- 
ing of the publican's prayer is, " Have mercy on me, who am 
confessedly a sinner;" or, ""Seeing that I am a sinner, have mercy 
on me."^ Still another valuable use of the article, which, even 
carries an argument with it of the writing of the Gospels before 
the Epistles, is quoted from Gersdorf, that " the four evangelists 
always write XQioxog, but Peter and Paul usually XQiaxog, as this 
appellative had in their time become a proper name." These 
are a few among the many valuable uses of this little part of 
speech, carefully used in Greek, but absolutely unknown to the 
Latin. Winer (Greek Grammar, Andover ed., 1870) sa3^s, " In 
the language of living intercourse, it is utterly impossible that 
the article should be omitted where it is decidedly necessary. 
'^OQOt: can never denote the mountain, nor rd OQog a mountain." 
(Matt. V. I, TO OQog.) 

Now, the Latin takes a stylus, or pen, and goes through the 
Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, sixty-six books, and expunges 
every article. 

A writer in '' The Edinburgh Review " eulogizes the Greek 
thus : " We cannot refuse our adrrtiration to that most wonderful 
and perfect machine of human thought, to the flexibility, the 
harmony, the gigantic power, the exquisite delicacy, the infinite 

* 125. 2 227. 3 231, 232. 



THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE ''DOUAiy 245 

wealth of words, the mcomparable felicity of expression, in which 
are united the energy of the English, the neatness of the French, 
the sweet and infantile simplicity of the Tuscan. Of all dialects, 
it is best fitted for the purposes of science and of elegant litera- 
ture. The philosophical vocabularies of ancient Rome and of 
modern Europe have been derived from that of Athens. Yet 
none of these imitations have even approached the richness and 
precision of the original. It traces with ease distinctions so subtle 
as to be lost in every other language. It draws lines where all other 
instruments of the reason make blots." ^ This is the language 
from which the New Testament was taken. To what was it trans- 
lated ? This author says, perhaps too strongly, " The want of a 
definite article and of a distinction between the preterite and 
the aorist tenses are two defects which are alone sufficient to 
place it below any other language with which we are acquainted. 
In its most flourishing era it was reproached with poverty of 
expression. Cicero, indeed, was induced by his patriotic feel- 
ings to deny the change ; but the perpetual recurrence of Greek 
words in his most hurried and familiar letters, and the frequent 
use which he is compelled to make of them in spite of all his 
exertions to avoid i;hem in his philosophical works, fully prove 
that even this great master of the Latin tongue felt the evil 
which he labored to conceal from others." ^ In a word, the 
Greek Testament was plunged into the Latin language^ and came up 
7i>ith the loss of all its definite articles and aorist tenses. 

We have spent so much time — not too much, may we think 
— on this point, that we might here and now forever dispel that 
baseless illusion, which is seen from so many considerations to 
be utterly groundless, that the Vulgate is the one proper and 
correct basis for a translation. This, we repeat, is as baseless 
an illusion as if a man should imagine that the apple-tree is lof- 
tier than the elm. With Jerome we say, " Graeca Veritas^ 
Graeca origor 

If this discussion be abstruse, this fact is not, that the great 
scholar, beginning with translation of the Vulgate, outgrows 
that, and feels that he must go farther back, and translate from 

* Edinburgh Review, 43, 331 : art. London University. 2 Ibid., 329. 



246 THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAIP 

the original. Wycliffe began with the Vulgate : Tyndale ended 
with the Hebrew and Greek. Jerome's first work was revisions : 
by the unerring good sense of perfected scholarship, his final 
labors were direct translations. It is worth while, perhaps, in 
this connection, to trace the growth of the mind of the enthusi- 
astic Geddes. He was, though a Catholic, brought up to read 
the " English " version. " When I had acquired," he tells us, 
" a sufficient knowledge of Latin, the Vulgate was put into my 
hands. . . . And now I perceived a considerable difference 
between it and the English translation. The latter appeared to 
me rugged, constrained, and often obscure, where the former 
was smooth, easy, and intelligible. The one seemed to read 
like a translation, the other like the original. When, in 1762, I 
began to read the originals, I had both versions constantly 
before me ; and now I discovered the cause of the great differ- 
ence between them. The chief study of the English translators 
I found had been to give a strictly literal version at the expense 
of almost every other consideration ; while the author of the 
Vulgate had endeavored to render his originals equivalently 
into such Latin as was current in his age. ' If ever I translate 
the Bible,' said I then, ' it must be after this manner.' " ^ 

Such was his predilection for the noble Latin, especially, 
no doubt, in Jerome's portions ; for he says, " His style is 
plain, easy, and unaffected ; and, although his Latinity is not 
that of the Augustan age, it is neither barbarous nor inelegant. 
In his diction and phraseology there is a peculiar grace and 
noble simplicity which it is not easy to imitate, and which no 
other Latin version, except that of Lloubigant, in any degree 
jDOSsesses." ^ And yet he is obliged later to come to a source 
other than the Vulgate as a translator; for he says, " It is well 
known that there are many places in the Vulgate badly ren- 
dered. It is also allowed that other faults have crept into it 
since the days of its author." ^ "A considerable part of the 
Vulgate, including the whole Psalter, is not Jerome's, but a 
translation from a translation none the best, and, moreover, 

1 General Answer to Criticisms, 3. 

2 Prospectus, 47. s Prospectus, 105; 



THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAir 247 

contaminated by corruptions that are not in the Greek : hence 
it is often unintelUgible." " The great defect of Jerome's ver- 
sion is its want of uniformity ; it being sometimes strict, and 
sometimes loose ; now barbarously literal, and now widely para- 
phrastic : every translation made from it, then, must partake 
of this variety." " It was my first intention to translate from 
the Vulgate, and even to make the Douai version with Challo- 
ner's emendations, in some respects, the basis of mine. But I 
soon found that this was an absurd idea, and that, by patching 
and piecing what had been pieced and patched, I should make 
a strange composition indeed. An entirely new translation 
from the Vulgate, but with such corrections as were manifestly 
warranted, was next in my contemplation, and partly executed. 
But a very short trial convinced me that neither would this 
method ever produce a tolerable version. Had I pursued this 
method, I must have been perpetually confronting the Vulgate 
with the originals, and very often correcting it by them, or pre- 
sented my readers with a very unfair and imperfect representa- 
tion of the sacred text." ^ 

This is the conclusion to our numerous, and to some, perhaps, 
tedious testimonies, that, in translation, perfected scholarship 
starts from the original ; that whoso starts from a version starts 
from a lower plane ; and that the Douaists, in starting from 
principle on the Vulgate to make a translation for Englishmen, 
committed a capital error, and one which would forever pre- 
clude their work from being thought of as a superlative English 
translation of the Scriptures. ^ 

Yet, notwithstanding their Latinized English, these men must 
be considered deserving of great credit, when we reflec!t, that 
notwithstanding the Catholic aversion to vernacular translations, 
and notwithstanding that the apathy of the Papal world fur 
nished little incitement or inducement to enter so huge a work, 
they entered upon it, and prosecuted the work with such enthusi- 
asm. They are to be honored for having given their Catholic 
countrymen the best version which they have, and the only 
complete version of the Scriptures. It is one of the highest 

1 Address to Public, 4. 



248 THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE ''DOUAir 

honors and services a man can attain to be the author of any 
translation of the Scriptures into tlie people's language, which 
remains a standard among any part of them for a hundred 
years. 

Let it be understood, then, we are grateful for their work ; 
and we pause from our disparagement of it, in co7npa7-ison, to 
refresh the reader by the perusal of Pope Pius VI. 's letter to 
them, whose sentiments are indeed worthy. He writes, " You 
judge exceedingly well that the faithful should be exhorted to 
the reading of the Holy Scriptures. For these are the most 
abundant sources which ought to be left open to every one, to 
draw from them purity of morals and of doctrine, to eradicate 
the errors which are so widely disseminated in these corrupt 
times. This you have seasonably effected, as you declare, by 
publishing the Sacred Writings in the language of your country, 
suitable to every one's capacity." O si sic semper Papae ! 

But to return. Commencing on this low plane of an un- 
emended Vulgate, it must now be added, that, as an English 
version, their translation descended to a still lower plane ; 
and this by reason of two separate defects. In the first place, 
of principle and design and avowal they rendered the Vulgate 
verbally as nearly as possible, intelligible or unintelligible, 
elegant or inelegant. The result, as might have been expected, 
was not a noble, nor even always an intelligible English. Then, 
in the second place, the translators were not men of such supe- 
rior genius as (even had they aimed at it) could have produced, 
in point of English style, a masterly translation. There some- 
times arise men (they are as. infrequent as great poets), who 
have such complete scholarship, such universality of spiritual 
and emotional apprehension and comprehension, and who wield 
such a weighty, graceful, pliant, adaptative style, that alone they 
are competent to render the composite Scriptures into their 
vernacular, running the Bible at once and forever into such a 
mould of strong and beautiful and appropriate diction, that it 
takes its abiding-place till the end of time in the hearts of a 
nation. Such men were Jerome and Luther. But these men 
were neither Luthers nor Jeromes ; nor did they compensate for 



THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAir 249 

their mediocrity by their numbers and by remarkable special 
gifts ; so that, even if a worthy English had been their ambition, 
they might have divided and revised their labors in such a way 
as conjointly to have produced an English translation worthy 
to endure. 

The result is such an English style as we find in the Douai, 
which, in many portions, is a good translation, but in many pas- 
sages is written in the foreign and un-English language seen in 
the specimens given : hence we cannot wonder at the opinions 
of scholars concerning the Douai. Geddes has already been 
quoted. Though a Catholic, he felt no scruple in saying, " It 
is a literal and barbarous translation from the Vulgate before 
its last revision. Their residence in a foreign country had cor- 
rupted the translators' language." ^ " It is a translation that 
hath need to be translated," said old Fuller. Westcott says, 
" As it stands, the Douai Bible is simply the ordinary, and not 
the pure Latin text of Jerome in an English dress. Its merits, 
•and they are considerable " (be it far from us to forget that), 
" lie in its vocabulary. The style, so far as it has a style, is 
unnatural; the phrasing is most unrhythmical; but the lan- 
guage is enriched by the bold reduction of innumerable words 
to English service." ^ "The translators did not scruple to leave 
the version unintelligible or ambiguous where the Latin text 
was so." ^ " The correspondence with the Latin text is thus 
absolutely verbal ; and it is only through the Latin that the 
English, in some places, becomes intelligible. But, on the other 
hand, Jerome's own greatness as a translator is generally seen 
through the second version." " The Psalter is the most unsat- 
isfactory part of the whole book. Even where the sense is suf- 
ficiently clear to remain distinct through three translations, 
— from Hebrew to Greek, from Greek to Latin, from Latin to 
English, — the stiff foreign style sounds strangely unsuited to 
words of devotion ; and, where the Latin itself has already lost 
the sense, the English baffles understanding." * 

(3.) Incredible now as it may seem, there is a yet further deg- 

^ Prospectus, no. 2 History English Bible, 328. 

3 Ibid., 327. * Ibid., 3.sO, 331. 



250 THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAi:' 

radatioji in the Douai since it left their pen. Mr. Shea says, 
" Few comparatively, either among Catholics or non-Catholics, 
are aware, that, among the many Catholic Bibles and Testa- 
ments, very few are exact reprints of any previous edition, but 
that, in fact, there are nearly as many versions, or at least re- 
censions, as there are editions, and that the names Rheims and 
Douai have become actual misnomers." 

"The Catholic World" (November, 1870) says, "In 1752 
an edition of Challoner's New Testament appeared, varying in 
more than two thousand places from Challoner's edition of 
1750." " But these changes are not all. 'The mass of typo- 
graphical errors to be found in some editions,' says Cardinal 
Wiseman, 'is quite frightful.' In point of fact, then, we have 
neither the Douai Bible, nor Challoner's Bible, in the current edi- 
tion ; and no one knows whose we have. The evil is a great 
one. Archbishop Kenrick endeavored to meet the want by a 
new translation ; but, with all his biblical and theological learn- 
ing, his edition has not met such favor as to insure its adop- 
tion, even in this country. It was put forward as an essay, in a 
limited edition, and is not in a shape for general use." 

Cardinal Wiseman says, " To call it any longer the Douai or 
Rhemish version is an abuse of terms. It has been altered and 
modified till scarcely any verse remains as it was originally pub- 
lished ; and, so far as simplicity and energy of style are con- 
cerned, the changes are, in general, for the worse. . . . New 
and important modifications have been made in every edition, 
till at length many may appear new versions, rather than revis- 
ions of the old." "The mass of typographical errors to be 
found in some editions is quite frightful, from many of them 
falling upon important words, and not so much disfiguring them 
as transforming them into others that give a correct grammati- 
cal, but unsound theological sense." ^ 

This volume, then, must stand by its name, and read with 
historical discernment of the words — such as this inquiry has 
gained for us, its name describes it — the '"'' Douai^'' version of 
the '''■Vulgate ;'''' nor can it ever aspire to the high position of 

* Wiseman's Essays, Catholic Versions, i. 75, 77, 78. 



THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAir 25 1 

being regarded by the more than a hundred millions who read 
the language of Shakspeare and Milton as superlatively the 
^^ English ^^ translation of the "Scriptures^ 

Recent Romish Clai?ns. 

Before passing from our account of the Douai, we entertain 
the suggestion of an eminent scholar, that no monogram on 
these two versions ought to omit to consider the claim made by 
recent Catholics, of the superiority of the Vulgate over the 
Greek text in the hands of the King James' translators, on the 
ground that the Vulgate, made in 391, represented earlier and 
more correct manuscripts. 

We make no pretensions to original or critical diplomatical 
scholarship. We confess, therefore, that, in addition to our pre- 
vious reading, we have given three days or more to the perusal 
and consideration of the best authorities, — Westcott, Davidson, 
Scrivener, Tregelles, Bentley, — some of which we had read 
before ; not omitting the Douaists' Preface nor the English 
translators' Preface. After due reflection, we see no reason to 
change the statements already made ; and we believe the view of 
Cardinal Wiseman and others can, without great difficulty, be 
shown to be Jtot the full and final landscape of the case as it stands 
out clear and distinct to the glass truly adjusted. 

We will first allow them fully and fairly to state their view. 

Cardinal Wiseman, speaking of Kenrick's revision of the 
Douai, says, " First, it is intended to vindicate the Catholic 
Vulgate, and show its superiority to the Anglican version. The 
work acquires, in our minds, an additional importance from 
another consideration. It is the first attempt to bring before the 
notice of ordinary Catholic readers the critical study of the 
text. It is an undoubted fact, that all modern judicious critics 
will give great weight, and even preference, to the Vulgate, or 
Latin version, beyond the ordinary Greek text, where the two dif- 
fer. The reason is simple. On these occasions, the oldest and 
best manuscripts and the most ancient versions almost invariably 
agree with the Vulgate; and their concurrent testimony estab- 
lishes the fact, that the Vulgate represents manuscripts more 



252 THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAir 

accurate than have been used to form the received Greek text. 
When we consider the scorn cast by the reformers upon the 
Vulgate, and their recurrence, in consequence, to the Greek as 
the only accurate standard, we cannot but rejoice at the silent 
triumph which truth has at length gained over clamorous error. 
For, in fact, the principal writers who have avenged the Vulgate, 
and obtained for it its critical pre-eminence, are Protestants. But 
though such a judgment has long been passed 'by the learned, 
the great bulk of readers, including men of education, no doubt 
fancy as yet that the Greek must always have the pre-eminence ; 
and even Catholics may not be free from this opinion. Now, 
Bishop Kenrick has taken the simplest mode of removing it. 
He shows, in few words, that where the Anglican version agrees 
with the Greek, but differs from the Latin, the best modern 
Protestant critics give the preference to the latter." ^ 

This is <2// which we find in Wiseman's writings on this subject. 

Bishop Kenrick, in his Preface, says, "The Vulgate version 
of the New Testament is almost as ancient as the text, having 
been made in the age of the apostles " (he refers to the Old 
Latin, of which the Vulgate is a revision), " or not long afterwards, 
and retouched by St. Jerome at the close of the fourth centu- 
ry : consequently it represents a Greek manuscript of the high- 
est antiquity." "At the Reformation, the Greek text, as it then 
stood, was taken as a standard." " The text was full of inter- 
polations and corruptions of various kinds ; whilst the Vulgate 
faithfully represented the text as it stood in the fourth century, 
or even in the first century." ^ 

" Since the famous manuscripts of Rome, Alexandria, Cam- 
bridge, Paris, and Dublin, were examined, a verdict has been 
obtained in favor of the Vulgate. In the vast majority of in- 
stances in which it differs from the common Greek, Protestant 
judges, with astonishing unanimity, have declared its correctness." 
" I deemed it all-important to prove in detail, by the testimony 
of unsuspected witnesses, that the Vulgate version of the Gos- 

1 Wiseman's Essays, i. 103, 104: Parables. 

2 Amazingly unscholarly is this statement, particularly in one supposed to be a special stu- 
dent of the Vulgate, oblivious to all modern criticism of the Vulgate as it was three centuries 
ago, and of the Roman criticism of tliat period upon it. 



THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAir 253 

pels is a faithful representation of the original text ; whilst the 
Protestant translation, taken from the common Greek, abounds 
in inaccuracies.'.' ^ 

With much more learning, the Douaists state this view in their 
Preface : " It is not only better than all other Latin translations, 
but than the Greek text itself in those places where they dis- 
agree." "And this the adversary himself, their greatest and 
latest translator of the Greek, doth avouch against Erasmus in 
behalf of the old Vulgate Latin translation, in these notorious 
words : ' How unworthily and without cause (saith he) does 
Erasmus blame the old interpreter,^ as dissenting from the 
Greek ! He dissented, I grant, from those Greek copies which 
he had gotten ; but we have found, in more places than one, 
that the same interpretation which he blameth is grounded upon 
the authority of other Greek copies, and those most ancient. 
Yea, in some number of places we have observed that the read- 
ing of the Latin text of the old interpreter, though it agree not 
sometimes with our Greek copies, yet it is much more conven- 
ient, for that he seemeth to follow some better and truer copy.' 
Thus far Beza. In which words he unwittingly, but most 
truly, justifieth and defendeth the old vulgar translation against 
himself and all other cavillers that accuse the same because 
it is not always agreeable to the Greek text; whereas it was 
translated out of other Greek copies, — partly extant, partly 
not exant at this day, either as good and as ancient, or better 
and more ancient, such as Augustine speaketh of, calling them 
doctiores et diligentiores, the more learned and diligent Greek 
copies, to which the Latin translations that fail in any place 
must needs yield." "If it disagree here and there from the 
Greek text, it agreeth with another Greek copy set in the mar- 
gin." " If all Erasmus' Greek copies have not that which is in 
the Vulgate Latin, Beza had copies which have it, and those 
most ancient (as he saith) and better." 

We believe our readers have before them the objection in 
the amplest and strongest statements. We presume that they 
appear to the common reader to establish the Latin Vulgate 

1 Bp. F. p. Kenrick : Pref. to Gospels, 1849. ^ Jerome. 



254 THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAir 

as the only document wt)rthy to be considered a basis for an 
English translation. Nevertheless, our reply need not linger, 
nor need it gather any thing from uncandor to display the 
strength of the real truth. 

We acknowledge with gratitude that our Roman-Catholic 
fellow-citizens have so good a version of the Holy Scriptures in 
the vernacular, which contains the full light of " the glorious 
gospel of the blessed God," which is " able to make wise unto 
salvation." " By far the greatest part of the Sacred Text (thank 
God)," says the great Bengel,^ " labors under no important 
variety of reading." ^ 

We recognize its merits and its helpfulness, especially — 
since the Vulgate strove to retain even the Greek ^r^<?r — in 
what Wiseman so finely calls " inversion, where congenial at 
once to the genius of our language and to the construction of 
the original."^ 

We recognize gladly the great work which Jerome, a " su- 
premely great man " as Westcott calls him, was raised up to 
do, in giving to the world the Latin Vulgate, one of the noblest 
of versions. Through that, Western Europe received the 
Scriptures for more than a thousand years, and permanently 
an extensive and exceedingly valuable addition to its religious 
diction. That version, so early made from the best manuscripts 
of fifteen hundred years ago, is of great critical value. As an 
aid to the understanding of many passages, we prize it, espe- 

^ Preface to Gnomon. 

2 Lest any youthful reader of this book should stumble at our much talk of corrupt text, 
variations, &c., we take pains to say that ..ese variations, while they are important in consid- 
ering one document as an exact and critical copy of another, may have little importance in 
causing substantial change of meaning. " Prof. Moses Stuart gave this testimony to the gen- 
eral correctness of the present text of the Bible in the original languages : ' Out of some 
eight hundred thousand various readings of the Bible that have been collated, about seven 
hundred and ninety-five thousand are of just about as much importance to the sense of the 
Greek and Hebrew Scriptures as the question in English orthography is, whether the word 
honour shall be spelled with a /<! or without it. Of the remainder, some change the sense of 
particular passages or expressions, or omit particular words or phrases; but no one doctrine 
of religion is changed, not one precept is taken away, not one important fact is altered, by the 
whole of the various readings collectively taken.' " 

3 "Ipse verborum ordo mysterium est" (Jerome). "The very order of the words is a 
mystery." Bentley first drew the attention of critics to this, as indicating what might be ex- 
pected of the Vulgate as a copy of the Greek in the structure of sentences. — Ellis : Critica 
Sacra, xvii. 



THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE ''DOUAH' 255 

cially in Jerome's Old Testament. We believe every biblical 
scholar ought to own the Vulgate. We confess that we are glad 
that we have the Vulgate Latin on our shelves, and the Rhem- 
ish New Testament. The variation in translation stimulates 
thought, and examination of the original. 

But with our appreciation of the Douai, and with our high 
appreciation of the Vulgate, we must express our clear sense of 
the two versions in cojnparison by a few plain propositions, which, 
we believe, cover the whole subject. 

I. No scholar — not even these Papal scholars — would think 
of saying that the Douai version is to be compared with the 
English version as a representative of the original Scriptures. 

The reader has probably received, from the Papal authors 
quoted, the impression that it is the Douai which they are 
exalting at the expense of the English version. We take it for 
granted that these worthy men did not intend to convey that 
meaning ; for certainly they do not say that, nor would they 
risk their reputation for scholarship by saying that. The 
Douaists themselves were, of course, speaking of the Latin, 
not of their version. Wiseman is comparing, if you observe, 
the Vulgate — not the Douai — with the "English." "To 
show the superiority of the Vulgate over the Anglican." Ken- 
rick, though inclined to be more rash in statement, if you regard 
his words, will be seen not to assert that the Douai, but only 
the Vulgate, excels the " Protestant version." 

No scholar — not even of Catholics — denies that the Douai 
is inferior to the English. It "matters not whether that inferi- 
ority come from a faulty original or from an obscure traiislation : 
the inferiority of the product is undeniable. 

We may, then, dismiss the court, since there is really no case. 
The Douai is not claimed to be the equal of the English. It is 
not Henry Paine who is asserted to be a better man than Arthur 
Stanley, but his father, William Paine. Not the Douai, but the 
Latin Vulgate, is asserted to be better than King James' ver- 
sion. 

But perhaps it may be imagined these authors meant to 
speak of the Douai, or might have spoken thus of the Douai. 
That they did not is conclusive that they could not. 



256 THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAir 

Extended proof is unnecessary. Geddes, the Catholic 
scholar, calls it " a barbarous translation made at Rheims." 
" It is a translation that hath need to be translated," said old 
Fuller. Westcott says, " The translators did not hesitate to 
leave the version unintelligible or ambiguous where the Latin 
text was so." " It is only through the Latin that the English 
in some places becomes intelligible. The Psalter is the most 
unsatisfactory part of the whole book. Even where the sense is 
sufficiently clear to remain distinct through three translations, — 
from Hebrew to Greek, from Greek to Latin, from Latin to Eng- 
lish, — the stiff foreign style sounds strangely unsuited to words 
of devotion ; and, where the Latin itself has lost the sense, the 
English baffles understanding."-^ He gives examples, of which 
we quote two as specimens : (Ps. Ivii. 10) " Before your thorns 
did understand the old brier ; as living so in wrath he swallow- 
eth them." (Heb. xiii. 16) "Beneficence and communication do 
not forget; for with such hosts God is pre-merited." "Such 
translations," he adds, " have no claim to be considered vernac- 
ular translations of the text : except through the Latin, they are 
unintelligible." 

Romanists themselves show their low appreciation of the 
Douai by their " faint praise," or no praise ; by the many re- 
visions, beginning with Challoner's revision in 1750, by King 
jfames'' ; ^ and a second, which corrected two thousand errors, 
in 1752; by dissatisfaction with these revisions;^ and by cer- 
tain remarkable things in connection with these revisions. For 
example : Wiseman shows these-amazing errors corrected in the 
Dublin revision, 1810: (Matt. xvi. 23) " Thou favorest not," 
instead of "savorest;" (Rom. vii. 18) "To accomplish that 
which is good, I find otif," instead of " find not ; " (Gal iv. 9) 
" Hqw turn ye again to the W07^k (for weaU) and poor ele- 
ments?" (v. 23) "charity" for "chastity;" also "Sin, which 
was asleep before, was weakened by the prohibition," instead of 
"awakened." He adds, as if in despair, "It is far from our 

1 Westcott: History English Bible, 327, 328, 331, 334. 

* " Dr. Challoner corrected the style, chiefly from King James' translation." — Geddes, iio. 

* See Wiseman. 



THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAir 257 

purpose to undertake a complete exposure of the many pas- 
sages which want emendation : such a task would require a 
treatise." 

Kenrick had the smoothest part of the Bible and the sim- 
plest, — the four Gospels ; and he ostentatiously marks all the 
trifling readings where the Vulgate excels, amounting, as we 
counted in Matthew, to a few over one hundred and twenty, 
nine-tenths of them variations like the omission of " and," 
" also," &c. But, on the other hand, he fails to show in how 
many places the English is superior ; and his corrections of the 
Douai by the English he very quietly places as footnotes. 
These, for the most part, do more towards altering the text. 
Still he leaves such confusing or erroneous phrases (in Mat- 
tiiew alone) as, " Touched the tuft of his garment;" "My yoke 
is sweet ; " " Out of the mouth," &c., " thou hast drawn praise ; " 
" They put over his head his cause in writing ; " " They wagged 
their heads, and said, Vah : " and these sentences, " Nobody 
putteth a piece of raw cloth to an old garment ;" "If the mira- 
cles," &c., " had been done in Sodom, perhaps it would have 
remained ; " " Peter said. Lord, mercy upon thee ; this shall 
never befall thee ; and he, turning, said to Peter, Go behind 
me, Satan ; thou art a scandal to me ; " " Whosoever will be the 
greater among you, let him be your waiter." 

It is 7iot of this book, but of another, — and who wonders ? — 
that Westcott says, who represents scholarship on this point, 
" From the middle of the seventeenth century, the King's Bible 
has been the acknowledged Bible of the English-speaking na- 
tions throughout the world, simply because it is the best."^ 

Our argument might stop here, and should, logically, stop here, 
since no one denies that the English is better than the Douai. 
But, since the subject is before us, we add several propositions 
in regard to the originals. There are times when objections 
should not only be answered, but driven to their inner works, 
and annihilated. 

2. No scholar would say that the Latin Vulgate text, which 
was before the Douaists, was a better basis for a translation of 

* History English Bible, i6o. 



258 THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAir 

the Old Testament than the Hebrew text, which was before the 
Enghsh translators. 

What was before the Douaists was (i) a Latin Psalter trans- 
lated from the Greek, which was translated from the Hebrew \ 
and (2) the rest of the Old Testament, in noble Latin, trans- 
lated by Jerome, yet still a translation^ and therefore not equal 
to the original, though admirable, we gladly admit, as Davidson 
describes the Vulgate : " Even in its present state, with all its 
corruptions, it generally coincides with the Masoretic text." 

What was before the Anglicans was the Hebrew text itself. 
It is indeed true, that there is said to be something yet to be 
desired in the critical emendation of the Hebrew text;^ yet 
Davidson's words represent scholarship as to the general purity 
of the text of the Hebrew Scriptures : " The result of all the 
collations of the Hebrew manuscripts which have been insti- 
tuted is the confirmation of the text lying at the basis of the 
Masorah. All known codices exhibit substantially that text. 
The oldest versions, which adhere most to the original, had 
nearly the same text. Little alteration has been made in it 
since settled by the Masoretes ; and the earliest Targums show, 
that, about the time of Christ, it was essentially what it after- 
wards appeared in the Masoretic period. When we try to go up 
farther — to the time when the canon was completed, and on- 
ward to the return of the Jews from exile — in search of what 
the primitive text then was, we cannot conceive of it as differ- 
ing much from its present condition. The Jews after the exile 
were very careful in preserving it. They guarded it against cor- 
ruption with watchful jealousy. Every thing conspires to show 
that we have the original now in a correct state. The genuine 
text has been handed down with purity."^ Jcsephus is a wit- 
ness to this extreme care of the Hebrew text : " Now, it ap- 
pears from the facts how far we have believed in our own 
Scriptures \ for, although already so many ages have passed, no 
one has ever dared either to remove or add or t^'iinspose any 

1 Schaff says that there are only 1,314 various readings of importance in the Hebrew Bi- 
ble, of which only 147 affect the sense. 

2 Davidson: Introduction to Old Testament, 44. See also Westcott : English Bible, 170. 
Geddes : Prospectus, 17. 



THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE "DOUAi:' 259 

thing. And it is for all the Jews, as a thought born with them 
from the first generation, to call them the teaching of God, to 
abide in them, and, if necessary, to die with joy to maintain 
them."^ 

There were five printed editions of the Hebrew Bible before 
King James' time. 

The Hebrew Bible, then, which was before the English trans- 
lators, is better than the Vulgate, which was before the Douaists, 
noble as that is. 

Concerning the New Testament alone, therefore, as to the 
superiority of the Greek text or the Latin Vulgate, can question 
arise. 

3. No scholar would assert that the Latin Vulgate, in the 
most ancient and valuable copies we now have^ could compare as a 
basis for translation with the Greek text, as also represented in 
the oldest Greek manuscripts now accessible. 

We hardly need argue this before scholars. Briefly we may 
show what copies of each are now accessible. Most of the 
best codices of each have come to light since the two transla- 
tions. 

Of the Old Latiit we have several valuable codices : Vercellis, 
of fourth century, found in 1726; Veronensis^ "hardly less 
ancient or valuable ; " another, of sixth century from Brescia ; 
Sarzannensis, also of fifth century. 

Of the Latin Vulgate we now have. Codex Amiatiftus, a noble 
copy of the whole Bible, written by the hand of the Abbot 
Servandus, A.D. 541. Only five years younger is the Codex 
Fuldensis. There are other codices also of great value. 

Of the Greek we have the following, all greatly valuable : — 

A, Codex Alexandrinus, presented to Charles I. of England 
by the Patriarch of Constantinople. This manuscript was writ- 
ten at Alexandria, and belongs to the fifth century. 

B. Vaticamis, in the Vatican since 1209, not properly published 
till 1857. This belongs to the fourth century, as early probably 
as Jerome. 

K (Aleph.) Sinaiticus^ found by Tischendorf — his story of 

* Against Apion, i. 8. 



26o THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAiy 

the finding is graphic — in the Convent of St. Catharine, on Mt. 
Sinai. 

It is as interesting as a romance, how Tischendorf, in travels 
in search for Greek manuscripts, in May, 1844, came to the 
Convent of St. Catharine, at the foot of Mt. Sinai ; how he 
saw a large basket full of old manuscripts, and the librarian 
told him that two heaps of such mouldered papers had already 
been committed to the flames. In this heap Tischendort tound 
part of a very ancient Old Testament in Greek. The authori- 
ties allowed him forty-five sheets, which were going to the 
flames. Rendered suspicious by his enthusiasm, they allowed 
him no more. He enjoined their preservation, returned to Sax- 
ony, made a second visit to the convent in 1853, came away 
unsuccessful ; obtained, after great opposition, the favor of the 
Russian emperor; arrived the third time at the convent in 1859 ; 
when about to depart, was casually shown by the convent- 
steward the manuscripts he came in search of ; affected indiffer- 
ence, asked to take them to his chamber, and there gave way to 
his transport of joy ! " I cannot now, I confess," he says, "re- 
call all the emotions which I felt in that exciting moment, with 
such a diamond in my possession. Though my lamp was dim, 
and the night cold, I sat down at once to transcribe the Epistle 
of Barnabas." This manuscript was eventually by the convent 
presented to the czar, who had splendid copies taken, and 
deposited in the great libraries of the world. ^ 

Tischendorf ascribes this manuscript to the fourth century. 
It may, he thinks, be one of the fifty copies made at Constan- 
tine's order in 351. "The value of this acquisition," says 
Kitto, " can hardly be over-estimated." 

C. Codex Ephraemi^ written in Egypt in the fifth century. 

All these have been made accessible since 1600, as also the 
ancient and valuable Old Latin and the Vulgate Latin manu- 
scripts mentioned. 

Now, exceedingly valuable as are the new-found manuscripts 
of the Vulgate, two of them only one hundred and fifty years 

1 Tischendorf : When were our Gospels written ? With a narrative of the discovery of 
the Sinaitic manuscript. Am. Tract Soc, 1866, pp. 132. 



THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAir 261 

after the great translator himself, yet no scholar would for a 
moment hesitate which to sacrifice, — the Greek manuscripts we 
now have, or the Latin Vulgate manuscripts we 7iow have, or 
even the Old Latin manuscripts we now have. 

Or even the Old Latin. These manuscripts, Vercellis and 
Veronensis^ of the fourth century, are extremely valuable ; for 
they represent Greek manuscripts, it may be as old as 170 
A.D., about which time the Old Latin was made. Some might 
think for a moment that they might be superior to our ancient 
Greek manuscripts. But, — 

1. The Douai is derived from the Vulgate, not from the Old 
Latin ; and the Vulgate follows the Old Latin mostly in the 
Epistles, and somewhat in the Gospels, the Old Testament 
scarcely at all. 

2. The Vercellis and Veronensis are Latin copies, of a Latin 
certainly not before 170 A.D., from a Greek before that. 

The Vatican and Sinaitic are Greek, /^j-j/^/)', — certainly direct 
and without the loss in translation, — possibly, we say, from the 
very manuscripts of John and Paul, Matthew and Peter. It can- 
not be shown that they are not. 

Thus far our propositions have been made with the utmost 
confidence, as in asserting the indisputable. That which we 
now make is made with less J>ositivefiess, yet as our confident 
belief, as suggested by our reading on the subject, that, — 

4. No scholar would maintain that the Latin Vulgate text, 
which the Douaists had before them, represented the original 
New Testament better than the Greek text which the English 
translators had before them. 

It is true that the Greek text at that period was not critical ; 
but, on the other hand, the Vulgate was confessedly corrupt. 
We find no scholars asserting, in comparison, which was most 
wide from its original ; but we certainly find no assertions, 
except that of Kenrick, absolutely without attempt at proof, that 
the Latin was any nearer to its original. 

Scrivener says of the New Testament,^ " None of the most 
ancient Greek manuscripts had then been collated ; and, though 

* Cambridge Paragraph Bible, 1873: Introduction, xxxii. 



262 THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAir 

Codex Bezae (D) had been for many years deposited in Eng- 
land, little use had been made of it." " It would be unjust to 
assert that the translators failed to take advantage of the mate- 
rials which were readily accessible ; nor did they lack care or 
discernment in the application of them. Doubtless they rested 
mainly on the later editions of Beza's New Testament, whereof 
his fourth (1589) was more highly esteemed than his fifth (1598), 
the product of his extreme old age. But, besides these, the 
Complutensian Polyglot, together with several editions of Eras- 
mus and Stephanus of 1550, were constantly resorted to." 

Such manuscripts of the New Testament would not rank high 
by the side of those since collated. 

EUicott says, " In the fourth edition of Erasmus, we really 
have the mother-text of our own authorized version." " Such 
it is ; and yet, by the providence of God the Holy Spirit, and 
through the loyalty and reverence with which the word of God 
had been transmitted, and that faithfulness which stirred in the 
hand and heart even of the writer of the meanest cursive manu- 
scripts, it is what it is, so far substantially in accord with what 
now we may rightly deem the true text as justly to call forth our 
enduring thankfulness for this mercy and providence of Almighty 
God." 1 

But, on the other hand, the Latin Vulgate was in no better 
state. Codex Amiatinus, Scrivener says, was seen, we are told^ 
by the translators ; but he adds, their work does npt show it. 
None of these noble copies of the Old Latin or of the Vulgate 
were at their hand. Geddes calls the Douai " a barbarous 
translation from an uncorrected copy of the VulgateT The Coun- 
cil of Trent was told that the text was " so corrupt, that only a 
pope could settle it." Sixtus tried to amend it, but, though a 
scholar, ridiculously failed ; and Clement, as all scholars con- 
fess, has presented to us something which is far from Jerome's 
Vulgate. "It is only right to state," says Scrivener,^ "that 
neither the Sixtine Bible nor the Clementine " " can be relied 
upon in the least for critical purposes. They are constructed 
in a loose and unintelligent fashion on manuscripts too recent 

1 Ellicott : On Revision, 38. ^ Six Lectures, 104. 



THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAir 263 

to be trustworthy." " The true readings must still be sought 
for in the older copies." 

Tregelles says/ " In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Cor- 
rectoria, prepared by the University of Paris and others, afford, 
at times, good evidence against the modern Vulgate, showing 
that it exhibits a Latin text, which has suffered even since the 
thirteenth century." "When about the middle of the fifteenth 
century the art of printing came in, of course it was out of the 
question to suppose that any critical skill or care was brought 
to bear upon the text thus multiplied." " The labor of Erasmus 
was not directed to the restoration of the Vulgate, but to the 
formation of a version which should, he hoped, take its place. 
Indeed, that scholar was so impressed with the corruption of 
the Vulgate, and with its contrariety to classical Latin, that he 
thought it could not be the actual version of Jerome." Yet 
" the modern Vulgate is substantially the version of Jerome, 
though the variations from it are frequent, and the changes are 
always for the worse." 

Bentley says, in a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
April, 1 7 16, " Popes Sixtus and Clement, at a vast expense, had 
an assembly of learned divines to recense and adjust the Latin 
Vulgate, and then enacted their edition authentic ; but I find, 
though I have not yet discovered any thing done dolo jftalo, they 
were quite unequal to the affair. They were mere theologi ; 
had no experience in manuscripts, nor made use of good Greek 
copies ; and followed books of five hundred years before those 
of double that age : nay, I believe they took these newest ones 
for the older of the two ; for it is not everybody that knows the 
age of a manuscript." " So that, to conclude in a word, I find 
that by taking two thousand errors out of the • Pope's Vulgate, 
and as many out of the Protestant Pope Stephens', I can set 
out an edition of each, in columns, without using any bock 
under nine hundred years old, that shall so exactly agree, word 
for word, and, what at first amazed me, order for order, that no 
two tallies nor two indentures can agree better." 

The emended Vulgate, then, to Bentley, seemed no better 
text than Stephens' New Testament. 

* Introduction to New Testament, 248. 



264 THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAir 

But the Douaists had before them an unemended Vulgate. 

It was, moreover, a traiislation^ and, though originally good, 
was — the New Testament, that is — not the best jDart of 
Jerome's work. 

5. One final proposition concludes, we believe, what is neces- 
sary to a full and fair comparison of these translations, — the 
English and the Douai, — that ' the English had gathered hito 
itself^ not all that it might with benefit, but a not inconsideralfle 
part of the excelleftces of the Vulgate. 

The Douaists had made some attempt to avail themselves of 
other scholarshiiD than the version before them. Westcott tells 
us that the " earlier English translations formed the groundwork 
of their version." Challoner, we have seen, corrected the Douai 
by King James'. 

But, on the other hand, the English version receives constant 
accessions from the Vulgate at every fresh revision. Wycliffe's 
version was from the Vulgate ; and this Latin (and his English) 
was inwrought into the minds of all intelligent and especially 
scholarly people, above all, of those who came forward to trans- 
late the Bible afresh. Besides this, the Vulgate was prized as 
a help during all the century of translation. We run together 
a few sentences from Westcott. 

" It is impossible to read through a single chapter without 
gaining the assurance that Tyndale rendered the Greek text 
directly, while still he consulted the Vulgate, the Latin transla- 
tion of Erasmus, and the German of Luther." Coverdale's 
" Pentateuch may be fairly described as the Zurich translation 
rendered into English by the help of Tyndale, with constant 
reference to Luther, Pagninus, and the Vulgate." " As far as 
I have observed, Taverner used no help but the Vulgate in the 
Old Testament ; " and, passing over the others, the authorized 
version made great use of the Vulgate. " A single epistle fur- 
nishes the following list of Latin words which King James' 
translators have taken from the Rhemish Testament : sepa- 
rated (Rom. i. i), co7isent (i. 32), i?npe?iitent (ii. 5), approvest 
(ii. \'^^ propitiation (iii. 25), remission (id.), grace (iv. 4), glory in 
tribulations (v. 3), commendeth (v. 8), concupiscence (vii. 7), revealed 



THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAir 265 

(viii. 18), expectation (viii. 19), conformable (viii. 29), confession is 
made unto salvation (x. 10), emulation (xi. 14), concluded (xi. 
32), conformed (xii. 12), instajit (xii. 12), contribution (xv. 26)."^ 
Besides this, nearly all the modern versions — French, Italian, 
Spanish, &c. — had been made from the Vulgate, which versions 
were used as helps by the King James' men ; and thus from all 
these upland washings from the Latin, and its derivative ver- 
sions, this fair meadow, the '' English," received much of the 
worth and wealth of the Vulgate. 

THE ENGLISH VERSION. 

The English version needs not so long a description as we 
have given to the Douai Vulgate : not, however, of course, be- 
cause its genesis, and progress to final completion, are any less 
interesting ; for what can be more interesting than tliat transla- 
tion which had its origin from Wycliffe, whose bones, dug up, 
were burnt to ashes, and scattered on the Avon ; from Tyn- 
dale, master of seven languages, but strangled and burnt at 
Vilvorde ; and with which are connected the names of Rogers 
the martyr, Cranmer the archbishop, Reynolds the Puritan 
scholar, Queen Anne Boleyn, and James the King ; and which 
was wrought out in Geneva and Cologne and Worms and 
Brussels, as well as in London and the university towns of 
England? The story of the English version, therefore, is amply 
worthy of full narration ; but for these reasons it needs it not. 
Its story has been more than once told in popular form ; and then, 
again, — which reason in the present case is prevailing, — its prog- 
ress is neither obscure nor indirect. Commencing with Wycliffe, 
or rather with Tyndale, it marches steadily forward to its com 
pletion under King James ; and as this history is so recent, all 
of it having occurred, we might almost say, under our eye, since 
the darkness of the mediaeval period ; and as the successive 
versions have recorded themselves in immortal and accessible 
type ; and as, moreover, the methods and spirit of their trans- 
lation are for the most part clear and undisputed, — there is little 
obscurity to remove, and little which is questionable to rebut, 

1 Westcott : Eng. Bib. 334. 



266 THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAir 

A plain, brief account of the English version, not entering, as 
we would like, if the length of our paper permitted or its needs 
required, into the interesting scenes connected with it, will 
satisfy our present purpose, — the comparison of the two ver- 
sions. 

Wycliffe has been called the " morning-star of the Reforma- 
tion." And certainly his Bible, and the living soul, which, first 
in imagination, and soon in reality, saw its pages in to his eyes 
more glorious than illuminated text, -^namely, in the vernacular 
words which carried the enlightenment and cheer of God's word 
to all who tilled the soil and plied the loom in England, — did 
much to usher in this latter-day glory, when, since the century 
began, a hundred millions of English Bibles have been sant out 
over earth and seas as widely as the sun scatters its all-pene- 
trating beams. Wycliffe was born in 1324 : he died in 1384. 
While regarding his work as in the very van of English transla- 
tions, we must not forget to name with honor the fragmentary 
versions of the venerable Bede and royal Alfred and others, 
which, though read only within extremely narrow limits in their 
day, and too crude and imperfect to exercise any formative 
influence upon the present version, nevertheless showed the 
longing of Englishmen, as early almost as England had a his- 
tory, and before she had a well-formed language, to have the 
Scriptures in their vernacular Anglo-Saxon, rude though it was.^ 

" It was a great day for England when John Wycliffe first 
conceived the idea of giving to his countrymen the whole Bible 
in the common language. The execution of that idea is the 
leading event of the fourteenth century. It would not be too 
much, perhaps, to call it the leading event in Anglo-Saxon his- 
tory." ^ In a sermon at Lutterworth, Wycliffe exclaimed, " O 
Christ ! thy law is hidden in the sepulchre : when wilt thou send 
thine angel to remove it ? " He himself was sent as that angel, 

Wycliffe, " being ignorant of the Hebrew and Greek languages, 



1 Anglo-Saxon translations: Bishop Adhelm, Psalms, 705 ; Bishop Egbert, Four Gospels, 
a little later; Bede, portions of the Scriptures (he died dictating part of John's Gospel), a few 
years later ; Alfred, about 900, Psalter ; Elfric, several books of the Old Testament, 995. 

2 Mrs. H. C. Conant : English Bible, Popular History. 



THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE ''DO UAH' 267 

which he had no opportunity of learning, was under the neces- 
sity of translating from the Vulgate." " Wycliffe may indeed 
be regarded as the father of English prose." " Scarcely an 
attempt had been made to use it in composition till Wycliffe, 
with his great heart of love for the people, laid hold of it as the 
vehicle of religious instruction. He took the rude elements 
directly from the lips of the despised ploughmen, mechanics, 
and tradesmen. He gave it back to them in all its unadorned, 
picturesque simplicity, but fused by the action of his powerful 
mind into a fitting instrument of thought, and enriched with the 
nobUst literature which the world has produced, — the utterances 
of inspired poets, prophets, and apostles, the inimitable histories, 
narratives, and portraitures, through which Divine Wisdom has 
told the sublime story of providence and redemption." ^ 

His translation was completed about 1384, a hundred and eight 
years before the discovery of America, and a hundred and thirty 
years before Luther. It was the first English Bible, and for a 
hundred and forty-one years it was the only one. A vast num- 
ber of transcriptions were made by priests : there are even now 
extant a hundred and seventy copies. They were read to, and 
read by, the common people. 

"The Sacred Book, 
In dusty sequestration held too long, 
Assumes the accents of our native tongue ; 
And he who guides tlie plough, or wields the crook, 
"With understanding spirit now may look 

Upon her records, listen to her song, 

And sift her laws." 

"In the century and a half during which it was the well-spring 
of the religious life of England, that long dark day when perse- 
cution kept the flock of Christ fast by the source of strength 
and consolation, its homely, childlike, expressive phraseology 
had become too deeply hallowed in the English mind as the 
medium of inspiration ever again to be dissevered from it. A 
comparison with the subsequent versions which have found favor 
with the common people will show them to be, in this respect, 

1 Conant, 98. 



268 THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE ''DOUAir 

all offsprings of this parent stock. Improved in many impor* 
tant particulars so as to reflect with greater exactness the sense 
of the inspired originals, they are yet substantially in form and 
manner but reproductions of that in which our unlettered fore- 
fathers first read the revelation of God." ^ Prof. Marsh says, 
"The difference between the version of Wycliffe and that of 
Tyndale was occasioned partly by the change of the language 
in the course of two centuries, and partly by the difference of 
the texts from which they translated ; and, from these two 
causes, the discrepancies between the two versions are much 
greater than those between Tyndale's, which was completed in 
1526, and the standard version which appeared only eighty-five 
years later. But, nevertheless, the influence of Wycliffe upon 
Tyndale is too palpable to be mistaken ; and it cannot be dis- 
guised by the grammatical differences, which are the more im- 
portant points of discrepancy between them. If we reduce the 
orthography of both to the same standard, conform the inflec- 
tions of the fourteenth to those of the sixteenth century, and 
make the other changes which would suggest themselves to an 
Englishman translating from the Greek instead of the Vulgate, 
we shall find a much greater resemblance between the two 
versions than a similar process would produce between secular 
authors of the periods to which they belong. Tyndale is merely 
a full-grown Wycliffe ; and his recension of the New Testament 
is just what his, great predecessor would have made it, had he 
awaked again to see the dawn of that glorious day of which his 
own light and labors kindled the morning twilight. Not only 
does Tyndale retain the grammatical structure of the older 
version, but most of its felicitous verbal combinations ; and, 
what is more remarkable, he preserves even the rhythmic flow 
of the periods, which is again repeated in the recension of i6ti. 
Wycliffe, then, must be considered as having originated the 
diction and phraseology which for five centuries has constituted 
the consecrated dialect of the English speech ; and Tyndale as 
having given to it that finish and perfection which has so ad- 
mirably adapted it to the expression of religious doctrine and 

^ Conant, 104. 



THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAir 269 

sentiment, and to the narration of the remarkable series of 
historical facts which are recorded in the Christian Scriptures."^ 
" Of tlie influence of WycHffe's labor, no person seems to have 
obtained a clearer view than Dr. Lingard. ' He made,' says 
this historian, ' a new translation, multiplied the copies with the 
aid of transcribers, and by his poor priests recommended it to 
the perusal of their hearers. In their hands it became an 
engine of wonderful power. Men were flattered with the appeal 
to their private judgment ; the new doctrines insensibly acquired 
partisans and protectors in the higher classes, who alone were 
acquainted with the use of letters ; a spirit of inquiry was gen- 
erated j and the seeds were sown of that religious revolution 
which in little more than a century astonished and convulsed 
the nations of Europe.' " ^ 

Even dead, he yet spoke to England ; and his enemies — the 
enemies of God's truth — dug him up after he had been thirty- 
one years in his grave, burnt his bones, and cast the ashes into 
the Speed, a little English brook which flows into the Avon. 
In this they did but give an emblem of his work, destroyed as 
they hoped, but rather scattered over the world. 

" The Avon to the Severn runs, 
The Severn to the sea ; 
And Wycliffe's dust shall spread abroad 
Wide as the waters be." 

Wycliffe's translation, as we have seen, was promulgated only 
by transcription and faithful preachers. " Whatever power it 
exercised in preparing the way for the Reformation of the six- 
teenth century, it had no perceptible influence on later transla- 
tions. By the reign of Henry VIIL, its English was already 
obsolescent ; and the revival of classical scholarship led men to 
feel dissatisfied with a version which had been avowedly made 
at second hand, not from the original. With Tyndale, on the 
other hand, we enter on a continuous succession. He is the 
patriarch, in no remote ancestry, of the authorized version." ^ 

^ George P. Marsh: Lectures on English Language, 627. 

2 Encyclopaedia Britannica, art. Wycliffe, 951. 

s Smith's Dictionary : Version, Authorized (Edward H. Plumptre), iv. 3424-3445, The 



270 THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAir 

"I perceived with experience," says William Tyndale, "how 
that it was impossible to establish the lay people in any truth 
except the Scriptures were plainly laid before their eyes in their 
mother-tongue." It was, then, by far-reaching design, and as 
means to an end, that Tyndale set about his work. At thirty- 
six years of age (1520), to a. certain divine, who had affirmed, 
"We were better to be without God's laws than the pope's," 
he said, " If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a 
boy that driveth the plough to know more of the Scriptures than 
he." ^ Tyndale's version appeared in 1526. Since Wycliffe's 
day, Faust and Gutenburg had invented printing; and, by a happy 
coincidence, the first volume issued in type had been a Bible.^ 
Every heart responds to Coverdale's reflection : " Methinks we 
have great occasion to give thanks unto God that he hath 
opened unto his church the gift of interpretation and of print- 
ing.^^ Yet Tyndale had not dared to print the Bible in England : 
so he commenced his work at Cologne, but was forced to snatch 
his sheets, and fly to Worms, where he completed the version. 
His was a master-mind. He was " a scholar, skilled in seven 
languages, and one of these is Hebrew. He prepared himself 
for the work by years of labor in Greek and Hebrew." " All 
external evidence goes to prove Tyndale's originality as a trans- 
lator." " The translation of the New Testament itself is proof 
of its own independence." " It is impossible," says Westcott, 
" to read through a single chapter without gaining the assur- 
ance that Tyndale rendered the Greek text directly, while still 
he consulted the Vulgate, the Latin translation of Erasmus, and 
the German of Luther." ^ A worthy eulogy is given by Geddes : 
"In point of perspicuity and noble simplicity, propriety of 

apparent disagreement between Plumptre's estimate of the influence of Wycliffe's version 
and that of Marsh and Conant is, perhaps, due in part to a real difference of opinion ; but 
more, probably, to their different point of view. The latter have in mind the effect of his 
English on the later versions. This must have been considerable. Tyndale was doubtless 
familiar with Wycliffe's Bible, and its phrases must have run in his mind ; but Tyndale 
translated directly and with originalitj'' from the originals, and it is doubtful if he directly and 
actually consulted Wycliffe's version. Plumptre is right in his assertion that " Tyndale is 
the patriarch," &c. 

^ Foxe : Acts and Monuments, 542, Carter's edition. 

2 Mazarin Vulgate, from press of Mainz, Gutenberg and Faust, 1455. 

8 History English Bible, 174. 



THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAir 271 

idiom, and purity of style, no English version has yet surpassed 
it." ^ He has impressed his genius forever upon the English 
Bible. " To Tyndale," says Plumptre, " belongs the honor of 
having given the first example of a translation based on true 
principles ; and the excellence of later versions has been almost 
in exact proportion as they have followed his." " To him it is 
owing that the versions of the English Church have throughout 
been popular, and not scholastic. All the exquisite grace and 
simplicity which has endeared the authorized version to men of 
the most opposite tempers and contrasted opinions — to J. H. 
Newman and J. A. Froude — is due mainly to his clear-sighted 
truthfulness." ^ " Throughout there is the pervading stamp, so 
often wanting in other like works, of the most thorough truthful- 
ness." Tyndale's noble simplicity is seen in translating, " not 
'grace,' but 'favor;' not 'charity,' but 'love;' not 'confess- 
ing,' but 'acknowledging;' not 'penance,' but 'repentance;' 
not ' priests,' but ' seniors ' and ' elders ; ' not ' salvation,' but 
'health.'" "Some of these we are now familiar with. In 
others, the later versions bear traces of a re-action in favor of 
the older phraseology." " When we study our Testaments, we 
are in most cases perusing the identical words penned by the 
martyr Tyndale nearly three hundred and fifty years ago." ^ 

Tyndale's version was ordered to be bought up and burned in 
England ; and Sir Thomas More ordered possessors of this 
translation to be set on horseback, with their faces towards 
the horses' tails, and thus to carry their copies to the place to be 
burned. Tyndale's noble life was crowned by martyrdom. He 
was strangled and burned at Vilvorde, near Brussels. 

The Beatitudes, as given by Wycliffe and by Tyndale, will 
serve to show their similarity and dissimilarity to each other 
and to our version, and also the growth of the language and 
the improvement in diction during these periods. They were 
both in Old English, — the first written, the latter printed. 

Wycliffe, 1380 : " And Jhesus seynge the peple, went up 
into an hil ; and whan he was sett, his disciplis camen to him. 

i Prospectus, 89. * Dublin Review, June, 1853. 

8 Marsh : Lectures English Language, 625. 



272 THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE ''DOUAL" 

And he openycle his mouthe, and taughte hem ; and seide, 
Blessid be pore men in spirit ; for the kyngdom of hevenes is 
herun. Blessid ben mylde men ; for thei schulen weelde the 
erthe. Blessid ben thei that mournen ; for thei schal be coum- 
fortid. Blessed be thei that hungren and thirsten rightwis- 
nesse ; for thei shal b'e fulfilled. Blessed ben merciful men ; 
for thei schul gete mercy. Blessed ben thei that ben of clene 
herte ; for thei schulen se god. Blessed be pesible men; for thei 
schulen be clepid goddis children. Blessed ben thei that suffren 
persecucioun for rightwisnesse ; for the kyngdom of hevenes 
is hern. Ye schul be blessid whanne men schul curse you, 
and schul pursue you ; and schul se3^e al yvel agens you liynge 
for me. Joie ye and be ye glade : for your meede is plenteous 
in hevenes : for so thei han pursued also prophetis that weren 
bifore you." 

Tyndale, 1526 : " When he sawe the people, he went vp into 
a mountayne, and when he was sett, hys disciples cam vnto 
hym, and he opened his mouth, and taught them sayinge : 
Blessid are the povre in sprete: for thers is the kyngdom of 
heven. Blessed are they that mourne : for they shalbe com- 
forted. Blessed are the meke : for they shall inheret the erthe. 
Blessed are they which hunger and thurst for rightewesnes ; for 
they shalbe fylled. Blessed are the mercyfull : for they shall 
obteyne mercy. Blessed are the pure in hert ; for they shall se 
god. Blessed are the maynteyners of peace ; for they shalbe 
called the chyldren of god. Blessed are they which suffre per- 
secucion for rightewesnes sake ; for theirs is the kingdom of 
hevene. Blessed are ye when men shall revyle you, and perse- 
cute you, and shall falsly say all manner of evle saynges agaynst 
you for my sake. Rejoice and be gladde, for greate is youre re- 
warde in heven. For so persecuted they the prophetts which 
were before youre dayes." 

Next follows rapidly — now that Tyndale and printing have 
awakened England — a succession of versions, in which we 
observe as a prime characteristic the oscillation backwards and 
forwards from extreme vernacular simplicity to ecclesiastical 
loftiness, until both found their just, golden mean, and in 



( 



THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAir 273 

which *we observe, also, a somewhat richer scholarsliip in the 
original, and a growing perfection of our language until the 
Elizabethan age, — the acknowledged golden age of English 
literature, — and withal a diction as applied to the Scriptures 
perfected and enriched and ennobled by the work of each 
succeeding mind, which, during the course of almost an entire 
century, in rendering the noble originals, strove to surpass all 
former versions in representing them felicitously in our mother- 
tongue. 

Cover dale issued his version, probably at Zurich, in 1535. 
King Henry VIII. did not like Tyndale. " There was no hope 
of obtaining the king's sanction for any thing of Tyndale. 
Cromwell pushed Coverdale to the work. He translates at 
second-hand 'out of the Douche' (Luther's German version)." 
" In practice he oscillates between penance and repentance, 
love and charity, priests and elders." " He acknowledges, 
though he dares not name it, the excellence of Tyndale's trans- 
lation." 

J/<7///^^7£/ 'i- version followed in 1537. The singular history of 
this book was probably this : " Coverdale's translation had not 
given satisfaction : least of all were the most zealous and 
scholarlike reformers contented with it. As the only complete 
Bible, it was, however, in possession of the field. Tyndale and 
John Rogers (the martyr), in the year preceding Tyndale's im- 
prisonment, determined on another, to include Old Testament, 
New Testament, and Apocrypha, but based throughout on the 
original." Left to himself, " after Tyndale's betrayal and burn- 
ing, Rogers carried on the work, probably at the expense of the 
same Antwerp merchant (Poynz) who had assisted Tyndale." 
^' Rogers' name, known as Tyndale's friend, is concealed 
under the name Thomas Matthew. Cranmer and Cromwell 
approve ; and a ' copy was ordered by royal proclamation to be 
set up in every church.' " " It reproduces Tyndale's work in 
the New Testament entirely, in the Old Testament as far as 
Second Chronicles, the rest being taken, with occasional modifi- 
cations, from Coverdale." "What has been said of Tyndale's 
version applies, of course, to this. There are, however, signs of 
a more advanced knowledge of Hebrew." 



274 ^^^ ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAir 

Taverner\^ edition^ 1539? is next in the line of succession. 
" The boldness of the translators had, as has been said, fright- 
ened the ecclesiastical world from its propriety. Coverdale's 
version was, however, too inaccurate to keep its ground." Tav- 
erner's edition professes " to be newly recognized, with great 
diligence, after the most faithful exemplars." " The edition 
acknowledges the labors of others (i.e. Tyndale, Coverdale, 
and Matthew), though he does not name them, ' who have 
neither undiligently nor unlearnedly travelled ; ' owns that the 
work is not one which can be done ' absolutely ' (i.e., com- 
pletely) by one or two persons, but requires ' a deeper confer- 
ring of many learned wittes together, and also a juster time 
and longer leisure.' But the thing had to be done : he had been 
asked to do it. In other respects, this may be designated, as an 
expurgated edition of Matthew's." 

Cranmer''s Bible, also called the Great Bible, came out the 
same year, 1539. The preface declares the book to be "truly 
translated after the verity of the Hebrew and Greek texts " by 
" divers excellent, learned men expert in the foresaid tongues." 
"The oscillating character of the book is shown in the use of 
' love ' instead of ' charity,' in Cor. xiii., and ' congregation ' 
instead of * church,' generally, after Tyndale ; while in i Tim. 
iv. 14 we have the singular rendering,. — as if to gain the favor 
of his opponents, — ' with authority of priesthood.' " 

.The famous Geneva version followed. Cranmer had followed 
Coverdale too closely to please the Geneva exiles. Whitting- 
ham, Goodman, PuUain, Sampson, and Coverdale himself 
labored "for two years or more, day and night." The New 
Testament was " diligently revised by the most approved Greek 
examples." "The Geneva Bible was unquestionably for sixty 
years the most popular of all versions. Eighty editions came 
from the press between 1588 and 161 1. It was, after 1576, 
printed by Barker, in whose family the monopoly of printing 
Bibles remained for a hundred and thirty-two years. This was 
the first Bible in Roman type. It was the first which, following 
the Hebrew example, recognized the division into verses. It 
was in a cheaper and more portable form, a small quarto. The 



THE "ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAi:' 275 

notes were spiritual and evangelical. // was the Bible of the 
great Puritan party. '''' 

Then at length came the Bishops'' Bible, originated by Arch- 
bishop Parker, made by eight bishops, with deans and profess- 
ors. It was hoped that it would establish its claim against the 
Genevan version. " In some respects it followed previous 
translations, and was avowedly based on Cranmer's." " Of all, 
it had the least success. Though some of the translators were 
good Hebraists, it did not command the respect of scholars. 
Though sanctioned by authority, it could not displace the 
Genevan. 

We come then, by gradual ascent, to the present version. 
King James^ version was due to a singular providence, — a sug- 
gestion by Dr. Reynolds the Puritan, during a conference of 
three days at Hampton Court, between the king, bishops, Puri- 
tan ministry, and others. The idea came as an inspiration to 
the mind of James, who discerned in it what would be an 
honor to his reign. Aided by counsellors, he was five months 
in selecting the translators, fifty-four in number. There were 
clergy of the Puritan party as well as of the Church party, lay- 
men also, " that so our intended translation may have the help 
and furtherance of all our principal learned men." John 
Broughton, who could talk Hebrew as well as English, was not 
invited, on account of his unmanageable disposition. Rey- 
nolds and Lively, the best Hebraists, soon died. Yet the forty- 
seven who accomplished the work were men of no mean schol- 
arship and critical judgment. Thirteen were heads of colleges. 
Six were bishops. Dr. Layfield was chosen for his skill in 
architecture. Bishop Andrewes was familiar with fifteen lan- 
guages, besides Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Greek, and Latin. 
Bedwell was the best Arabic scholar of his time. Lively was 
Regius professor of Hebrew. Five others also, then or after- 
wards, held the chair of Hebrew at Oxford and Cambridge. 
Saville was Greek tutor of Elizabeth.'^ A volume would be 
required to tell the story of this version. Briefly must it here 
be related. The whole body of translators, divided into six 

' Their biographies are given in Townley's Illustrations, iii. 200, seq. 



276 THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAiy 

companies, and working at Oxford, Westminster, and Cam- 
bridge, observing certain rules given to make their labor more 
uniform and thorough, in three years completed the work, 
which was then revised by a select company, and given to 
the world in 161 1. Every part received fourteen revisions. 
Dr. Sanderson, one of the youngest of the translators, in a 
sermon, afterwards censured a part of the translation, giving 
three reasons why a certain word should have been differently 
translated. In the evening Dr. Kilbie said to him, " We had 
considered those reasons, and found thirteeit more considerable 
reasons why it was translated as now printed."^ The marginal 
readings are an integral part of their work, and often superior 
to the text. Selden, in his " Table-Talk," says, " The transla- 
tion in King James' time took an excellent way. That part 
of the Bible was given to him who was most excellent in such 
a tongue ; and then they met together, and one read the trans- 
lation, the rest holding in their hands some Bible, either of 
the learned tongues, or French, Spanish, Italian, &c. If they 
found any fault, they spoke ; if not, he read on " (p. 6). In 
their preface they tell us they " brought back to the anvil that 
which they had hammered ; " so that some of their work was 
revised fourteen to seventeen times. Geddes says, "The means 
and the method employed to produce this translation promised 
something extremely satisfactory, and great expectations were 
formed from the united abilities of so many learned men." ^ 

The work was to be based on the Bishops' version, though 
other versions were fully read. And if no Romanist scholar 
was among the translators, yet the labors of Martini, Allen, and 
Bristow are inwrought into the voluine ; for the Rhemish and 
Genevan " contributed most largely of all to the changes which 
the revisers introduced." The translation, of course, is neither 
uniform nor perfect ; yet this eulogy on Isaiah fifty-third will 
apply with nearly equal force to all their work : " Throughout, 
the most delicate care is given to the choice of words; and 
there is scarcely a verse which does not bear witness to the 
wisdom and instinctive sense of fitness by which it is guided." 

1 J. Comper Gray: Bible Lore, 95. ^ Prospectus, 92. 



THE "ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAir 277 

" No kind of emendation appears to have been neglected ; and 
almost every change which they introduced was an improve- 
ment."^ "It contained," says one, "the wealth of seven 
antecedent versions, and of as many contemporaneous versions 
in other tongues." 

With all the imperfections of this translation, — and they 
are such, no doubt, as necessitate a revision^ principally as a 
version, but also as a fabric of English, — this version has come 
to be considered as, on the whole, unrivalled. It is the admira- 
tion, if not the marvel, of scholars. Our argument, as well as 
inclination, requires that we mass here the wealth of scholarly 
homage, in marked contrast to the scholarly estimate of the 
Douai version, to the "unrivalled English version." 

" Two hundred and fifty-seven years ago the English Bible 
was given to the world, when Shakspeare and Bacon and Ra- 
leigh and Ben Jonson and Drayton and Beaumont and Fletcher 
were living, to read and admire the richest formation of that 
great and plastic era of our language, the bright consummate 
flower of saintly labor and scholarly genius, the wonder of lite- 
rature coming down with the words of Shakspeare, and, like 
them, preserving to us the wealth and force of the Saxon tongue, 
— our mother English, in its simplicity and perfect beauty, — 
the picturesque structure of an age long gone by, already gray 
with antiquity, in whose familiar forms of speech the voices of 
our forefathers and kindred linger, and the inspiration of the 
Almighty seems to speak as with the majesty of an original 
utterance, — the English Bible, which has impressed itself upon 
the Christian heart of to-day, and is looked upon in many cases 
as if it were the actual product of the ancient scribe, and its 
pages are read and pondered over as if they contained the 
ultimate and unalterable expression of divine truth." 

This may seem undue eulogy ; but a scholar whose mental 
culture is satisfied in this book can hardly help soaring in its 
praise. Geddes, the Catholic scholar, though in one place he 
asserts his preference for Tyndale's work, and indeed for all 

» Westcott: Hist. Eng. Bib., 364. 



278 THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAi:' 

the English translations/ is hardly less eulogistic : " The highest 
eulogisms have been made on it, both by our own writers and 
by foreigners ; and indeed, if accuracy, fidelity, and the strictest 
attention to the letter of the text, be supposed to constitute the 
qualities of an excellent version, this, of all versions, must, in 
general, be accounted the most excellent. Every sentence, 
every word, every syllable, every letter, and every point, seems 
to be weighed with the nicest exactitude, and expressed in the 
text or in the margin with the greatest precision. Pagninus 
himself is hardly more literal ; and it was well remarked by 
Robertson, above a hundred years ago, that it may serve for a 
lexicon of the Hebrew language as well as for a translation." ^ 

Prof. Marsh remarks, " The English Bible has been more 
universally read, more familiarly known and understood, by 
those who use its speech, than any other version, old or 
new." *' It has now, for more than two centuries, maintained 
its position as an oracular expression of religious truth, and 
at the same time as the first classic of our literature, — the 
highest exemplar of purity and beauty of language existing in 
our speech."^ 

" An analysis of the style of our present version has been 
made by Prof. Marsh,^ in connection with that of fourteen emi- 
nent writers from Spenser to Johnson ; and it has been found 
the best representative of true English among the whole nation : 
one thirty-third part only of its words, or three out of a hun- 
dred, have a foreign origin ; while one-third of Gibbon's, and 
one-fourth of Johnson's, originally came from abroad." Prof. 
Marsh says of our translation, " It was an assemblage of the 
best forms of expression applicable to the communication of 
religious truth that then existed, or had existed in all the succes- 
sive stages through which the English had passed in its entire 
history."^ "To attempt a new translation of the Bible, in the 
hope of finding within the compass of the English language a 

1 Different scholars distribute variously, among the long line of revisers, the merit of the 
final product, the English version. 

2 Prospectus, 92. 

3 George P. Marsh : Lectures on English Language, 617, 619. 

* Ibid., 120. s Ibid., 622. ■ 



THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAi:' 279 

clearer, a more appropriate, or a more forcible diction than that 
of the standard version, is to betray an ignorance of the capa- 
bilities of our native speech with which it would be in vain to 
reason."^ 

Walton says, ^^ Eminet inter omjiesT Selden^ at the time of 
the completion of that version, said, " The English translation 
of the Bible is the best translation in the world, and renders 
the sense of the original best." ^ Davidson writes, " Our Eng- 
lish version of the Bible deserves much of the praise which it 
has received. Its merits are conspicuous. Fitted to be a 
national possession, it has moulded our tongue to an extent 
scarcely realized. Its pure and homely idioms are a part of the 
language which cannot die. It has enriched the mother-tongue 
with Hebrew and German turns of expression." ^ Westcott has 
this meed of praise : " A German writer somewhat contemptu- 
ously remarks that it took nearly a century to accomplish in 
English the work which Luther achieved in the fraction of a 
single lifetime. The reproach is exactly our glory. Our ver- 
sion is the work of a church, and not of a man ; or, rather, it is 
a growth, and not a work. Countless external influences, inde- 
pendent of the actual translators, contributed to mould it ; and, 
when it was fashioned, the Christian instinct of the nation, 
touched as we believe by the Spirit of God, decided on its 
authority."^ And elsewhere he says, "When every deduction 
is made for the inconsistency of practice, and inadequacy of 
method, the conclusion yet remains absolutely indisputable, that 
'the work of these revisers issued in a version of the Bible, better, 
because more faithful to the original, than any which had been 
given in English before."^ Tischendorf says, " Their translation 
of the New Testament has not only become an object of great 
reverence, but has deserved to be such. The English Church 
possesses in it a national treasure." It was " executed with 
scholarship, conscientiousness, and love." Trench also says, 
" The dictionary of our English version is nearly as perfect as 

1 George P. Marsh : Lectures on English Language, 632. 

2 Table-Talk, 5. 3 Revision of Old Testament, i. 
* History English Bible, 370. 6 Ibid., 364. 



28o THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE ''DOUAir 

possible." " The words used are of the noblest stamp, alike 
removed from vulgarity and pedantry. We do not find in our 
version, as in the Rheims, whose authors seem to have put oft 
their loyalty to the English language with their loyalty to the 
English crown, 'odible,' nor ' impudicity,' nor 'longanimity,' 
nor ' coinquinations,' nor ' comessations,' nor ' contristate,' nor 
' zealatours,' nor ' agnition,' nor ' suasible,' nor . ' domestical,' 
nor ' repropitiate.' " ^ " Our version, besides having its own 
felicities, is the inheritor of the felicities in language of all the 
translations which went before. Tyndale's was singularly rich 
in these ; " " and, though much of his work has been removed in 
the successive revisions which our Bible has undergone, very 
much of it still remains." " To him we owe such phrases as 
' turned to flight the armies of the aliens,' which may be thought 
to be obvious ; but the Rheims does not get nearer to it than 
'turned away the camp of foreigners.'"^ "We hardly know 
the immeasurable worth of its religious diction till we set this 
side by side with what oftentimes is preferred in its room." ^ 
" Each time," says Lzgkffoot, " I read the marvellous episode 
on Charity in the thirteenth chapter of Corinthians, I feel with 
increased force the inimitable delicacy and beauty and sublim- 
ity of the rendering, till I begin to doubt whether the English 
language is not a better vehicle than even the Greek for so lofty 
a theme." ^ Dr. Schaff says, " The popular English Bible is 
the greatest blessing which the Reformation of the sixteenth 
century bestowed upon the Anglo-Saxon race." " It has formed 
the style and taste of the English classics. It has a hold upon 
the popular heart which it can never lose. Its vocabulary and 
phrases, its happy blending of Saxon force and Latin dignity, its 
uniform chasteness, earnestness, and solemnity, its thoroughly 
idiomatic tone, its rhythmic flow, its more than poetic beauty 
and harmony, have secured the admiration of scholars, and the 
affection of whole churches and nations in which it is used." ^ 

Blunt (J. H. Blunt, "The English Bible," 96) says, "The 
translation thus completed has kept its hold on Englishmen for 

1 Oa Authorized Version, 9, 10. 2 Page 12. ^ Page 25. 

* On Revision, 32. ^ On Revision, xx. 



THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE " DOUAH' 281 

two centuries and a half. Its excellence is admitted far and 
wide by the learned ; the dignified yet sweet rhythm of its sen- 
tences is dear to the unlearned ; and the spiritual satisfaction 
which myriads of good and holy minds have found in it is no 
small proof that a divine blessing has rested upon it." 

Eadie says, " It is still abroad in its might ; not, as of old, in 
heavy folios, but in handy volumes, — closet and pocket com- 
panions. It costs only a trifle, so that it is within the reach of 
every one. It has found a home under the Southern Cross, in 
Australia and New Zealand ; and in the United States it has 
multiplied itself with inconceivable rapidity. The sun never 
sets upon it. It has spread, and will spread, with the English 
name and influence, round the globe. All people speaking our 
tongue are united by their common Bibles, common temples, 
and the blessing of a common salvation. Our forefathers gave 
it welcome, and their descendants can never bid it farewell; for 
the oracle is always fulfilling itself, 'Tell ye your children of it, 
and let your children tell their children, and their children an- 
other generation.' Englishmen shall never weary of reading the 
Blessed Life told in these Gospels, and in that charming style, 
which, rising above all provincial peculiarities, forms one fra- 
ternal speech to ' all that in every place call upon the name of 
Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours.' Centuries have 
passed over it ; but its youth abides. Many volumes far younger 
than it have perished in the wreck of years. The majority of 
books published among us are connected with it, either against 
it, or for it, or on it. Though revised, it will ever preserve its 
identity \ as the statue is the same, though its features be bright- 
ened when the dust is blown off it. It can be superseded only 
when the higher relations and developments of its truths are 
revealed to us in another sphere." ^ 

Plumptre praises in these words : " The language of the au- 
thorized version has intertwined itself with the controversies, the 
devotions, the literature, of the English people. It has gone 
wherever they have gone, over the face of the whole eartH. 
The most solemn and tender of individual memories are for the 

* John Eadie, D.D. : The English Bible, ii. 333. 



282 THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE ''DOUAT:' 

most part associated with it. Men leaving the Church of 
England for the Church of Rome turn regretfully, with a yearn- 
ing look at that noble ' well of English undefiled ' which they 
are about to exchange for the uncouth monstrosities of Rheims 
and Douai." 

Thus Faber, a "pervert to Rome," writes : "Who will not 
say that the uncommon beauty and marvellous English of the 
Protestant Bible " — why can he not have the grace to call it, 
with all scholarship, solely and simply the English Bible ? — "is 
one of the great strongholds of heresy in this country ? It lives 
on the ear like a music that can never be forgotten ; like the 
sound of church-bells, which the convert hardly knows how he 
can forego. Its felicities often seem to be almost things, rather 
than mere words. It is a part of the national mind, and the 
anchor of national seriousness. Nay, it is worshipped with a 
positive idolatry, in extenuation of whose grotesque fanaticism its 
intrinsic beauty pleads availingly with the man of letters and the 
scholar. The memory of the dead passes into it. The potent 
traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its verses. The 
power of all the griefs and trials of a man is hidden beneath 
its words. It is the representative of his best moments ; and 
all that there has been about him of soft and gentle and pure 
and penitent and good speaks to him forever out of his Eng- 
lish Bible " (here his mental sense spontaneously names the 
volume aright). " It is his sacred thing, which doubt has 
never dimmed, and controversy never soiled. It has been to 
him all along as the silent, but, oh ! how intelligible, voice 
of his guardian angel ; and, in the length and breadth of 
the land, there is not a Protestant, with one spark of religious- 
ness about him, whose spiritual biography is not in his Saxon 
Bible." 1 

Froude, the historian, is stirred beyond his wonted calmness 
by the contemplation of this volume : " The peculiar genius, if 
such a word may be permitted, which breathes through it, 
the mingled tenderness and majesty, the Saxon simplicity, the 

1 Dr. F. William Faber: Lives of the Saints, xxv. ii6. In Dublin Review, June, 1853. 
Also Eadie : English Bible, ii. 158. 



THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE '' DOUAir 283 

preternatural grandeur, unequalled, unapproached, in the at- 
tempted improvements of modern scholars, — all are here, and 
bear the impress of the mind of one man, and that man 
William Tyndale." ^ 

Is any thing further needed to glorify the English version but 
to remember that this volume is no more sectional than sec- 
tarian ; to recall the remark of Plumptre, " It has gone wher- 
ever Englishmen have gone, over the face of the whole earth ; " 
to reflect with Anderson, that " the English Bible is at the 
present moment in the act of being perused from the rising to 
the setting of the sun " ? " This Bible is the only one on which 
the sun never sets^ ^ And all this has warrant and verification 
in the issue, in little more than half a century, of a hundred 
million " English Bibles " to the intelligent readers of the lan- 
guage of "Paradise Lost" and of the "Declaration of Inde- 
pendence," scattered in all climes, and under all constella- 
tions. 

When we consider the sober statements of linguists, both 
Catholic and Protestant, eulogistic of its exceeding accuracy 
and fidelity to the originals from which it was directly trans- 
lated ; the encomiums of scholars, both Catholic and Protestant, 
to its language and diction as "marvellous English ;" the way 
in which, both as a translation and as a fabric of English, it 
was built up, not as the autocratic work, however excellent, of 
one sole man, but, in the long course of nearly a hundred years, 
by the concomitant and successive labors of nearly a hundred 
learned and enthusiastic scholars of all spiritual temperaments, 
and church predilections, and preferences of style and diction, 
and bringing their work, after multifarious revisions, to com- 
pletion in the very Augustan period, the golden age of Eng- 
lish literature ; and, finally, the universality of the reception 
of their work among all those who speak the English tongue, 
unless — and hardly then — they are debarred by ecclesiastical 
authority or religious scruple, — when we review all these con- 
siderations, is any thing further needed to vindicate the claim 
of this volume to be regarded everywhere, in the legislative 

^ History of England, iii. S4. ^ Anderson : Annals of Bib. Pref., x. 11. 



284 THE ''ENGLTSH'' AND THE '' DOUAir 

hall and in the public school, among all English-speaking 
nations, as superlatively the English translation of the Scriptures, 
the English Bible ? 

One final excellence this English Bible has, a grand excel- 
lence, — some might consider it the supreme excellence, — its 
illimitable capability of revision. Every one was struck with 
admiration when Agassiz described his immense plan of a 
Zoological Museum, one-fourth of a mile in the circuit of the 
lines of its walls, yet, as he said, to be developed afterwards, 
only two-fifths of one wing to be constructed at first ; and, in 
the plans in the reports, the future additions are hinted at by 
the dotted lines, showing the completion of the ample extension. 
So the English Bible has this crowning excellence, that it is 
capable, and will be to the end of time, of bearing revision ; 
that its acknowledged perfection and its cherished position will 
not suffer it to be set aside like all previous versions, but that 
it can gather into itself, at the ripe times, century by century 
if need be, the accumulated results of linguistic and archaeolo- 
gical scholarship and of perfected English. This is its eternal 
privilege and prerogative, and stamps it as forever, in the true 
lineal and royal succession, the English Bible. 

Lightfoot says, " Our English Bible owes it unrivalled merits 
to the principle of revision ; and that principle it is proposed 
once more to invoke. ' To whom ever,' say the authors of our 
received version, ' was it imputed for a failing, by such as were 
wise, to go over that which he had done, and to amend it where 
he saw cause ? ' " ^ 

Ellicott says, " If it is to be a popular version, it can only 
become so by exhibiting in every change that may be intro- 
duced a sensitive regard for the diction and tone of the present 
version, and also by evincing, in the nature and extent of the 
changes, a due recognition of the whole internal history of the 
English New Testament. In other words, the new work must 
be on the old lines." ^ 

Davidson says, " No man who intends to supersede King 
James' will do so otherwise than by working upon it. He will 

* On Revision, 32. 2 Revision of Authorized Version, 52. 



THE ''ENGLISH'' AND THE ''DOUAir 285 

make' a new translation by subjecting that of 161 1 to thorough 
revision."^ 

A Catholic writer says, "The Catholic Church never has 
made, and most probably never will make, a vernacular trans- 
lation." To Westcott's words all scholars respond: "Our Bible, 
in virtue of its past, is capable of admitting revision, if need be, 
without violating its history. As it has gathered into itself, 
during the hundred years in which it was forming, the treasures 
of manifold labors, so it still has the same assimilative power 
of life." 2 

* Revision of Old Testament, 145. ' History English Bible, 370. 



THE IMPERIAL EXILE. 



I 



Daniel Webster, in that speech of which Winthrop said, 
" Beyond all doubt it was the speech of our constitutional age," 
— "TV// simile aut secundum ; " which Choate refrained from 
setting in rivalry to Demosthenes' great oration, simply because 
the Gothic languages, as he said, had not the words to make a 
"crown speech" of, — in an outburst in the magnificent perora- 
tion of that address in which he showed his love and reverence 
for the American Union, then threatened, exclaims, " I have 
not allowed myself to look beyond the Union to see what 
might be hidden in the dark recesses behind."^ 

So does one feel in contemplating the possibility that the 
Bible — the luminary which has created and constantly vivified 
all modern education and the American republic — should be 
blotted from our firmament. The mind repels the thought. 

*''' Horresco referens.^'' 

Reluctantly, therefore, the writer accedes to a suggestion that 
he should set forth what would be the result were the Bible exiled 
from the school, — reluctantly, yet eagerly ; for even while these 
papers were first appearing, within the half-year of our Cen- 
tennial triumph. Law has put her finger on the lip of Public 
Education, — and that, too, in Boston, — and forbidden her to 
say that word, which, more than any other, taught us that " all 
men are created equal," — the word " Our Father." The apa- 
thy, nay, more, the sophisticated and crude ideas, on this sub- 

1 Webster's Reply to Hayne. 
286 



THE IMPERIAL EXILE, 287 

ject, of really great men, are marvellous. Men whose views are 
wide and comprehensive on other subjects miss the point, are 
politicians and not statesmen here. Pursued by public clamor, 
they, in their haste and perturbation, are ready, like Medea, to 
fling even their brother to the pursuer. They write as if they 
were trying to adapt themselves to popular notions, and save 
our public-school system by yielding all that any one pleases to 
call " sectarian," rather than attempting to discern and stand 
upon, "first, midst, and last," the just and eternal connection be- 
tween State schools and God and righteousness. Not thus will 
these men preserve either their power to serve their country, 
or the respect of those who clamor, or the public-school sys- 
tem. These opponents care little for our concessions ; for 
what they are pressing towards is the destruction, first, as far 
as they are concerned, and then utterly, of the public-school 
system itself. The only wise and philosophical way is to study 
how far religion — catholic, unsectarian religion — belo7igs, in 
the nature of things^ to the education of youth in the public 
school as a preparation for the State, take our stand there, and 
make the struggle — which, strangely enough, many are oblivi- 
ous to — for free institutions in America. 

" Swiftly the politic goes : is it dark ? he borrows a lantern : 
Slowly the statesman and sure, guiding his feet by the stars." 

Our hesitancy, therefore, gives way to eagerness, — '"'' Facit in- 
dignatio versum." 

It will not be the writer's object to ^^rophesy the visible and 
palpable evils which will come from banishing God and moral 
instruction from schools. Rather, this paper will set forth the 
departures from wisdom in the exile of the Bible, leaving to the 
reader, if he choose, to fancy the outward evils which will result. 

I. To EXILE THE BiBLE FROM THE PUBLIC SCHOOL WILL BE 
TO DISPENSE WITH SALUTARY, WITH AMERICAN INFLUENCES, 
JUST WHEN THEY ARE MOST NEEDED. If the Bible haS UOt 

been misconceived, it imparts a salutary influence. If we have 
not been entirely misreading American history, the influence 
which has moulded our past, and which ought to mould our 



288 THE IMPERIAL EXILE. 

future, is from this book. Now, in that period when we are 
throwing our doors — Atlantic and Pacific — wide open to an 
un-American, and, in a large proportion, ignorant and unelevated 
throng of emigrants, we come, in our unspeakable sagacity, to 
the height and pitch of wisdom of diminishing salutary and 
American influences. Consider these statistics, given by Mr. 
Charles Wyllis Elliott, in a lecture, and afterwards furnished me 
in correspondence. "Population of Massachusetts in 1870, 
United-States census, — native born, 478,821; foreign born, 
353,319; of foreign parents, 626,211 ; total of foreign national- 
ity^ 979553° j total population, 1,458,351. Over two-thirds of 
the population of Massachusetts are foreign born and of foreign 
parentage." And yet, in face of this, we propose to di?ninish 
the vitalizing American influences. Wisdom says, In periods 
of rapid immigration, to preserve the original institutions, in- 
crease their efficiency, not diminish it. As you increase the 
meal, increase the leaven. But Americans have learned a new 
wisdom, and say, As you increase the meal, decrease the leaven. 

II. To EXILE THE BiBLE FROM THE PUBLIC SCHOOL IS TO 
YIELD THE OUTMOST AND STRONGEST FORTRESS WHICH PRO- 
TECTS American institutions, when we have distinct warn- 
ing THAT they are TO BE ATTACKED AND DESTROYED. 

This proposition is not identical with the preceding. The 
foreign throngs come to our shores foreign in spirit, indeed, 
needing the leaven of our institutions ; yet we acquit them, 
speaking generally, of any intention to subvert our institutions : 
on the contrary, we believe they come, not only with the de- 
sign, but with the wish, to submit to the beneficent influences 
in this Western Republic. Moreover, let it be understood that 
we acquit Catholics^ as such, of any intention to do violence to 
the land of their adoption. But we do not acquit Romanists 
of such designs. We distinguish by a clearly-marked line be- 
tween Catholicism and Romanism. Catholicism is a church 
with dogmas : Ro7nanism is a hierarchy, whose seat is on the 
Seven Hills, which aims to subjugate all nations as its prov- 
inces. The Catholics have no evil designs ; but the Romanists 
dominate the Catholics, and the Jesuits are the heart of the 



THE IMPERIAL EXILE. 289 

Romanists. Romanism does have and avow the intention to 
destroy American institutions. Bungener says, " The true and 
only Catholics are the Jesuits." ^ " At the Council of Trent, 
when Lainez, the general of the Jesuits, undertook to set forth 
his theory of the infallibility of the Pope, he forced every one 
to admit that he and his brethren alone were, if not in the 
right, at least the only honest and complete applicants of the 
principle of authority." Although, then, the larger part of 
Catholics are attached to American institutions, it behooves us 
to ask. What says the Jesuit, the core of Romanism, which 
finally subjugates Catholicism to its inner force and purpose ? 
This is the Jesuit oath : " I do renounce and disown any alle- 
giance as due to any heretical king, prince, or state named 
Protestant, or obedience to any of their inferior magistrates or 
oflEicers ; " " and I will do my utmost to extirpate the heretical 
Protestant doctrine, and to destroy all their pretended powers, 
regal or otherwise." The Papal Syllabus of T864, as is well 
known, condemns the public-school system, or any other, "with- 
drawn from all authority of the Church." 

The attack upon American institutions comes, then, not from 
Catholics, but from Romanists. 

This proposition contains two points : first, an assertion 
that we have distinct warning that American institutions are 
to be attacked and destroyed. Bishop O'Connor of Pittsburg 
says, " Religious liberty is merely endured until the opposite 
can be carried into effect without peril to the Catholic world." 
The Archbishop of St. Louis said, " If the Catholics ever 
gain, which they surely will, an immense numerical majority, 
religious freedom in this country will be at an end." " The- 
Catholic Review " (January, 1852) said, " Protestantism of every 
form has not, and never can have, any rights where Catholi- 
city is triumphant ; and we lose the breath we expend in de- 
claiming against bigotry and intolerance, and in favor of reli- 
gious liberty, or the right of every man to be of any religion,, 
as best pleases him." Father Hecker, in 1869, in New York, 
said, " The Catholic Church numbers one-third of the Americans 

* Priest and Huguenot, ii. 191. 



290 THE IMPERIAL EXILE. 

population ; and, if its membership shall increase for the next 
thirty years as it has for the thirty years past, in 1900 Rome 
will have a majority, and be bound to take this country and keep 
it." He also predicts that " there is ere long to be a State re- 
ligion in this country, and that State religion is to be Roman 
Catholic." Again he says, "We number seven millions; and 
in fifteen years we will take this country, and build our institu- 
tions over the grave of Protestantism." This purpose to de- 
stroy American institutions is, then, clearly written ; " too fairly, 
Hubert, for so foul a deed." 

// is also co7itained in the proposition that the Bible in the 
schools is the outmost and strongest fort, the best place to 
thwart Papal intentions. And this for two reasons among 
others. First, because the Bible is conspicuously connected 
with American institutions, since " free America is born of the 
Bible," and "all modern education owns the Bible as mother." 
It is peculiarly American, therefore, to retain this book, not only 
because the best book about God, but because intimately and 
vitally connected with the life of America. To give up the 
Bible in the schools is to renounce, in advance, the America 
born of the Bible, and our education born of the Bible. In the 
second place, the reading of the Bible is the best place to meet 
Papal attacks, because, if we give up that fort, they propose to 
build o?ie on the very same foundation. They do not want secu- 
lar schools, which we are hastening to concede : they anathema- 
tize them. They say, Put your Bible out or not ; we care not : 
we shall put our religion in just as soon as we have power, 

"The Tablet " (Nov. 30, 1869) says, "Exclude every sec- 
tarian exercise, and wholly secularize the schools ; let them 
teach nothing of religion, but be confined solely to secular edu- 
cation : what is the result ? The system is even more objec- 
tionable than before. It has always been a cardinal doctrine in 
the economy of the Catholic Church to incorporate religious 
instruction with the daily secular teaching of its scholars." 

What, then, are we to do ? Simply to make that fortress 
invincible ; and this can be done in only one way, — by estab- 
lishing religious exercises absolutely unsectarian, by unsecta- 



THE IMPERIAL EXILE. 



291 



rian devotions, and reading, without explanation, of the " Eng- 
lish " Bible, with permission to read simultaneously from any 
other. Settle the thought of America for twenty years upon 
the idea of a7i e7itirely unsectarian religious exercise^ and Protes- 
tants and Catholics, whatever Romanists might say, would de- 
fend that idea for a hundred years. But put out all religion 
from the school, and, as soon as Catholics have power, they 
must put theirs in. Therefore make the fight here, on the 
Bible unsectarianly used, and unsectarian prayer and praise : 
there you will carry and anchor the best judgment of the Catho- 
lic world ; there you will be invincible, if anywhere, in resisting 
the attack of Jesuits upon the liberty of America. 

Surely it cannot be wise to weaken before God and man our 
public-school system, by destroying the religious side of it, 
when by wisdom we can make it absolutely unsectarian, and so 
make our system impregnable to the assaults to be made upon 
it; while, if we reject the religious side, we make it ^^ even more 
objectio?iable^^ (2iX\d justly so) to Catholics, — make them more 
determined to destroy it, and us less whole-hearted to defend 
it. And the weakest side, and that on which Catholicism will 
assail and finally destroy it, is to be that it is an " atheistic, god- 
less education," " a system which ought to go where it came 
from, — to the Devil." If we cannot defend education with 
God in it, we certainly, as before Catholics, cannot defend an 
educational system which leaves God out. 

The state of things is this : Both Protestants and Catholics be- 
lieve in religion as a part of educatio?t. Protestants, who now 
have the majority, say, "We are willing to compromise by leav- 
ing religion out." Catholics, who will, perhaps, have the majori- 
ty, say, " Never, never, will we compromise on secular schools ; " 
and they never will. Therefore the compromise must be on 
the other side, — how much religion both shall agree to as proper 
to a public school. The only wise way, therefore, is, while we 
have the power, to have unsectarian religion in the schools^ with 
which neither Protestants nor Catholics can find just fault. 
To strengthen the fortress by making it unsectarian, and not 
to abandon it, is, therefore, our wisdom. 



292 THE IMPERIAL EXILE. 

III. The exile of God and righteousness from the 

SCHOOL INTRODUCES THIS FALSE AND PERNICIOUS IDEA, THAT 
EDUCATION IS MERELY INTELLECTUAL TRAINING. 

We have already reaped some tares from this sowing. The 
true, the salutary idea of education is, that it is the complete 
development of man. Pestalozzi says, — and his word stands 
in all European schools, — "Education is the development of 
mind, heart, hands." This, however, is not a new idea in the 
world. Plato, in Protagoras, says that the Athenians, " sending 
their son to the schoolmaster, are more urgent in requiring him 
to look after the manners and morals of the youth than after 
his letters and music." Felton says, " All being necessary to 
the education of the citizen, who should be able, in the lan- 
guage of Milton, ' to perform, justly, wisely, and magnanimously, 
all the duties both of peace and war.' " 

This idea of a complete public education, that it includes 
moral as well as mental training, is as old as Cyrus. " Persia," 
says Xenophon, " did not content herself with legislating against 
crime : she moulded the minds of her citizens from childhood 
by a public educational system to virtue." " In the boys' 
quarter the time appears to have been chiefly occupied in trying, 
under the president, all cases of crime and misdemeanor which 
had arisen among the boys themselves. Theft, deceit, calumny, 
and ingratitude were thus brought to punishment ; and it is 
commonly said that the Persian boys went to school to learn 
justice, as elsewhere boys go to school to learn to' read." 
Hence the saying of Herodotus, that " the Persian was taught 
to ride, to shoot the bow, and to speak the truth." Cyrus gives 
this incident of his boyhood : " I have often been appointed to 
decide cases, and I made only one mistake. That was in the 
case of the boys and the coats. There was a big boy who had 
a little coat, quite too small for him ; and there was a little boy 
who had a large coat, very loose upon him. So the big boy 
-made the little boy exchange coats with him ; and I decided that 
he was right in doing so, and that each boy should keep the 
coat which best fitted him. But the master beat me for giving 
this decision : for he said that it was against the law to force a 



THE IMPERIAL EXILE. 293 

person to give up his property, and that justice consisted in 
obeying the law. So now I know what justice is." Pestalozzi 
has expressed the true idea of education thus: "I consider 
*" early physical and intellectual education as merely leading to 
a higher aim, to qualify the human being for the free and full 
use of all the faculties implanted by the Creator, and to direct 
all these faculties towards the perfection of the whole being of 
man, that he may be enabled to act in his peculiar station as an 
instrument of the all-wise and almighty Power that has called 
him into life." 

An education without a moral aim may make for our State an 
Alcibiades, a Machiavel, a Borgia, a Tweed, but not a Wash- 
ington, an Alfred, a Wilberforce, a Howard. Prof. Tholuck 
says, " That word ' smart ' will break America's neck, unless 
America breaks its neck ; " which is only saying in epigram, 
that an education of intellect, apart from education of con- 
science, will ruin America. 

IV. The exile of God and righteousness from the pub- 
lic SCHOOL introduces A STRANGE INCONGRUITY BETWEEN THE 
DRIFT OF MODERN THOUGHT AND THE SCHOOL INSTRUCTION. 

This will sooner or later breed contempt of our system of 
education, and of those who conduct it. Cook said, in one of 
his fine outbursts of eloquence at Tremont Temple, " I look up 
to the highest summits of science, and I reverence properly, I 
hope, all that is established by the scientific method : but, when 
I lift my gaze to the uppermost pinnacles of the mount of 
established truth, I find standing there, not Haeckel, nor Spen- 
cer, but Helmholtz of Berlin, and Wundt of Heidelberg, and 
Herman Lotze of Gottingen, physiologists as well as metaphysi- 
cians all ; and they, as free investigators of the relations between 
matter and mind, are all on their knees before a living God." 

Is this, then, a time to banish the thought of God and the 
best Occidental book about him, and the saying to him, " Our 
Father," in the place of public education ? 

The age of materialism is passing. Mr. Cook remarks, " Prof. 
Tholuck said to me repeatedly, ' If a man is a materialist, we 
Germans think he is not educated.' " While the foremost 



294 ^^^ IMPERIAL EXILE. 

naturalist of the age stands with his scholars at Penikese in 
reverent silent prayer before the God of Nature, was it the day 
for the State to say to our youth within the places of education, 
It is now time to desist from saying "Our Father"? 

It is as if Mr. Cook, who commenced his lectures with 
prayers, should say, as the proof of the living God grew 
stronger from week to week, 'Now^ gentlemen, we will omit the 
address to God. So a father, who should talk as never before, 
to his children at the table, of the wonderful provision for man's 
wants made by the Father Almighty in the cereals and animals, 
but should add, My daughter, you may now remove these 
mottoes which have d.dorned the dining-room so long, " Give us 
our daily bread," and "The Lord will provide." 

Especially will this harsh incongruity appear if we consider 
this new arrangement in contrast with educational systems which 
we are pleased to consider altogether inferior. " What is the 
secret of your prosperity ? " asked the Chinese embassy at the 
Revere House dinner. "Our educational system," was the reply. 
" They should have told them," said Dr. Neale, " that it was the 
knowledge that ' God so loved the world that he gave his only- 
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him might not perish, 
but have everlasting life.' " j;. 

But let the answer pass, "Our education." Its newest de- 
velopment, they might have said, is, that the name of God, 
which has always been mentioned, is now thrust out. Ah ! 
says the Chinese, I must adopt that. I, in my pagan, ignorant 
boyhood, made my most reverent bow, as I entered school, 
before the name of Confucius on a tablet ; and I, says the 
Japanese, in my folly and heathen blindness, believed that 
education should acknowledge God, and in my boyhood made 
my salutation to Tenjin, god of learning. And they depart 
from America, instructed ; and they say to their countrymen. In 
America educated men more and more believe in God ; but — 
why we know not — in \\i^ place of education the name of God 
is not to be spoken. 

V. In the exile of the things of God the State re- 
nounces THE PREROGATIVE OF FORMING THE CHARACTER OF 
HER FUTURE CITIZENS. 



THE IMPERIAL EXILE. 295 

The State, in that case, says in effect that she has the prerog- 
ative to form the intellectual character of her citizens ; but she 
has no authority to teach them to be virtuous, honest, temperate, 
reverent. She has absolutely no power for an hour, for a 
minute, anywhere to teach the boy Tweed that he is not to 
make the man Tweed. 

We need not adduce the sayings of our statesmen on this 
point ; for every one knows that this assertion reverses the 
opinion of all whose names and whose words have been revered 
in modern history. Since our government reposes on the virtue 
as well as intelligence of her citizens, since all nations have 
declined and fallen through lack of public virtue, it is univer- 
sally recognized, except by some narrow minds, — which think 
that music and art and science make men^ — that the State 
should secure the virtue of her citizens. She has the right 
to form the moral character of her future citizens in the 
school. 

VI. The State and education will be in the incon- 
sistency OF repudiating the book to which they both 
OWE their existence. 

There is a story of a slave-mother, who, by hard labor, had 
earned her daughter's freedom ; and, having bought her a pair 
of shoes, she came into the room and sat down to view with 
great satisfaction her emancipated child. But the daughter 
rose, and ordered her mother out of the room, saying that she 
was a slave, and not fit to sit with free folks. 

Some one pertinently inquires, "whether the Bible, if thrust 
forth, will allow the school to live." We may add, and whether 
it will allow the 7iation to live. 

VII. The State will give up moral training as neces- 
sary TO ECONOMIZE AND UTILIZE THE TALENT OF HER SONS. 

Had not the State a right to give such a training, if that had 
been possible, to Edgar A. Poe, as would have given her seventy 
years of his wonderful imaginative powers directed to higher 
ends ? 

We do not hold the Spartan theory of the State, that she is 
the supreme unit, and that every man is to be trained, even 



296 THE IMPERIAL EXILE. 

contrary to all his normal powers, to subserve the purposes of 
the State. Nor is the Egyptian theory respectable, — of hold- 
ing every man in the caste and occupation of his fathers. But 
this is the thought : The State has a right to give every man a 
full development of his powers, and by instruction furnish 
moral safeguards to him, leaving the direction of those cultured 
powers to the man himself, yet fairly expecting that those 
powers, in some sphere, will in some way advance, and not mar, 
the general welfare. This is the principle at the root of those 
many addresses to graduating classes, remmding youth that 
their country and their state have a right to expect a return in 
worthy and valuable lives. " Every virtuous youth formed for 
the public is a blessing to it," says an old writer.-^ There are, 
by statistics., one million drunkards ., of whom sixty thoiisand die an- 
nually., and Jive hundred thousand drunkard-makers., iii the United 
States. By certain instructions given at the proper time to her 
youth on temperance and on the sin of wicked gain, the State 
might save half the number, and turn their talent into valuable 
channels. This modern school-arrangement says the State has 
no right to do it. On the contrary, we affirm, that if the State, 
by proper instructions, could have saved Poe's life and talents 
to herself and humanity, she was derelict in duty in not doing 
it. There are, we will suppose, thirty every month (which is 
nearly the number), whose dripping, lifeless bodies are laid in 
the Morgue in Paris. In ten years there were 2,807 ^^ these 
suicides, most of them taken from the Seine. But in 1872 there 
were 567 ; in 1873, 660 ; and in 1874, the immense number of 
1,000, or nearly three every day. The State could have saved 
half of them by reading to them in the Scripture the story of 
God's care for oppressed and desolate Hagar. But you say, 
France has no right to read them this salutary story ; for 
you say. The State has no right to save the lives of her citizens, 
and economize and utilize the talents of her sons, by throwing 
around them the safeguard of a moral training. That must be 
left to the possible or chance action of religious bodies ; but the 
State, though the sufferer, has no duty, and no protection 

1 Dodd: Sermons. 



THE IMPERIAL EXILE. 297 

VIII. Education and the State will repudiate their 

PAST. 

No nation, without great cause, — as the Japanese, on the in- 
troduction of great light, — should repudiate the great features of 
its past. We say to the fathers who founded our system of edu- 
cation and set the Bible in it, we say to Gov. Tompkins of New 
York and to Benjamin Franklin, *' Your ideas are obsolete, and 
we inaugurate a new system." 

Nay, rather, we say of our public-school system, with the 
Bible and moral instruction in it, the heritage received from the 
venerated fathers, — 

" Woodman, spare that tree ; 

Touch not a single bough : 
In youth it sheltered me, 

And I'll protect it now. 
'Twas my forefather's hand 

That placed it near his cot : 
There, woodman, let it stand j 

Thy axe shall harm it not. 

That old familiar tree, 

Whose glory and renown 
Are spread o'er land and sea, — 

And wouldst thou hew it down ? 
Woodman, forbear thy stroke ; 

Cut not its earth-bound ties : 
Oh ! spare that aged oak, 

Now towering to the skies." 

IX. Finally, the exile of this book and the reverent 

PRAYER will ERE LONG CREATE THIS STRANGE INCONGRUITY, 
THAT THE PARTY OPPOSED TO PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND DEVOTIONAL 
EXERCISES IN THEM WILL BE MADE TO APPEAR THE MOST RE- 
LIGIOUS AND DEVOUT PARTY. 

They say, " We do not want the Bible read in the school 
where we are, nor the Lord's Prayer uttered ; " and when you 
concede, and cast God's things out, they say, — the phrase is 
theirs, — "Atheistic Protestantism." Protestantism has pre- 
vailed two centuries and a half in America, has been leader in 
State and education ; and its crowning glory, its consummate 



298 THE IMPERIAL EXILE. 

flower, the proud plume on its helmet, was, in the summer of 
the Centennial year, to banish the Lord's Prayer from the 
school. We say, Shame ! 

The time may come when such sentences as these which 
follow may seem refreshing ; when, in drinking in their noble 
words, we shall half forget that they mean the " Catholic " reli- 
gion, which the State has no right to teach in her schools, and 
not the " catholic religion," " that which is everywhere and al- 
ways religion," as Brownson so well defines it, which is the real 
meaning to fill out these words, and which it is the State's duty 
to teachj — these noble words of the Davenport Catholics, " We 
believe and hold, and all history sustains us, that all education 
not based on religion is heathenish^ and must prove destructive to the 
State in the end ; that the safety of the republic depends on the 
intelligence and virtue of its citizens ; that the downfall of na- 
tions has always been caused by irreligion and immorality \ " or 
these words of McQuaid, "The new-fangled scheme of educa- 
tion without God ;" or these words of Archbishop Purcell, "We 
Catholics are of the conviction that children are sent to school 
not only to be formed into citizens, but also, and especially, to 
be educated into good men and good Christians ; and our 
church believes in all earnestness with Guizot, the celebrated 
Protestant statesman of France, that education can by no 
means be separated from religious influence." 

And these men are right, while we are wrong, if you limit 
their utterances to their prima facie meaning, — in which the 
Protestant Guizot and the Catholic Purcell might agree, — the 
unsectarian recognition of God and his righteousness in educa- 
tion. Such is the incongruity to which an atheistic Protestant- 
ism will bring us, that the men whom we consider, some of 
them, the enemies of good institutions, shall appear more wise, 
more advanced in their thinking, more devout and regardful of 
the welfare of the republic, than the unworthy descendants ot 
those who crossed the seas to find a place to establish a State 
with God in it. Nay, more, the time may come when disgust may 
be so keen at a Protestantism that put God out of public educatiofi, 
that thoughtful inen — that the State — may make suit to Catholi- 



THE IMPERIAL EXILE. 299 

cism to take the helm of education^ and give us a school that will 
at least have God in it. 

If " Our Father " is for the next century not to be murmured 
in our schools, if morality is not to be explicitly inculcated there 
as preparation for citizenship, if God's name and the best 
thoughts about him are to be banished from the State's instruc- 
tions to her youth, we say with Webster, as we think of what 
would be the logical result, " May my eyes never be opened to 
what lies behind I " 



THE BIBLE AND THE MANUAL OF 

MORALS. 



This concluding essay will aim to sum up as recapitulation^ 
and perhaps add to by way of further corroboration, the grounds 
on which there should be a service to God in the public schools, 
and that service should include reading the best book about him ; 
and also, further, to show how these ideas can be realized in a 
satisfactory and effective and — it is believed, to candid and 
devout minds in every religious sect — an approved and desira- 
ble service. 

First, The proper material of the devotional exer- 
cise SHOULD BE considered. 

It has been made plain, it is believed, that, 

I. God and his righteousness should have place in the 

SCHOOL. 

It would seem that this had been sufficiently argued. It 
remains only to sum up the principal reasons, that we may have 
them distinctly before us as a proper preparation for seeing and 
stating clearly what kind of a service will be effective and accept- 
able, and will answer all the requirements of the case, as in the 
broadest and best sense a catholic and not a sectarian service. 

(i.) God should have place in the school. 

I. God, as the God of all sciences and knowledges, should 

be recognized in the place of public education. The argument 

is sufficiently drawn out in the first paper. All natural science 

conducts to the one, — to God. Zoology, botany, the " star-eyed 

300 



THE BIBLE AND THE MANUAL OF MORALS. 301 

science," geology, physiology, — all lead to a great Being. " The 
undevout astronomer is mad." Agassiz requesting his students, 
at the opening of the Penikese School, to pause in silent prayer, 
is suggestive and delightful. Whittier has set the noble fact in 
the gilded frame of his poem. " God geometrizes," says Plato. 
" History requires the hand of God." " No one is educated who 
fails to see God in history." " Ethics, as the science of duties, 
runs as on a sunbeam up to God." " The science of govern- 
ment traces back to God." 

Atheistic scholarship is crude ; even the most splendid minds 
of atheists showing a fault in reasoning which in the forum 
scientice is indefensible, and which works like a flaw in a carpen- 
ter's plane, or a break in the thread which spoils the web through 
the whole piece. Education is sound and full only when Coper- 
nican, with God in the centre. 

2. God, as the great moral Being, should be recognized in the 
school. The true education, according to Pestalozzi, is that of 
the whole man, — heart, mind, head. In the school, the teacher, 
impressing truth and honesty and self-sacrifice, mentions Wash- 
ington, Colbert, Florence Nightingale. Is she not to mention 
God ? Whoever and whatever this Being, we all ascribe to him 
all goodness. He is the pleroma of every excellence. An edu- 
cator who proposes to carry out Pestalozzi's idea, to cultivate 
the heart, will find no better way than daily reverent calling on 
the Supreme Excellence before the pupils, and choice words 
read descriptive of his attributes and imitable perfections. ' 

We believe nothing will so calm yet exhilarate the mind for 
the studies and duties of school as a devotional exercise, prop- 
erly conducted. Reinhard says,^ " It was a matter of no small 
difficulty to preserve order among several thousand men, some 
days, in a retired place, without any form of police or civil power, 
as the Lord evidently maintained by the authority he then en- 
joyed. It shows us, in general, the silent influence always exerted 
by the presence of virtue upon mankind." 

Dr. Arnold of PvUgby, Mary Lyon of Mount Holyoke, and 
whatsoever other teacher characterized by moral seriousness, 

* Twelfth Sermon, on Mark viii. 1-9. 



302 THE BIBLE AND THE MANUAL OF MORALS. 

have, by their conduct of the devotional service at the opening 
of school, made 

" His morning smile cheer all the day." 

3. God as the God of all life, and as the moral Governor over 
the world, should be recognized in the school. The school is a 
preparation for the State. The State is to teach in the school 
whatever she wisiies should appear in the life, order, and welfare 
of her citizens. In a composite nation like ours, made up of 
streams from diverse nations, and destined to be, as Sumner 
has so finely said, the " aiiricJialcum " of the world, there will 
doubtless be many strange and pernicious ideas in the mass as 
yet heterogeneous, which the State, regardful of the temporal 
good of her citizens, and her own general good growing out of 
that, is bound to counteract. The State is to deal with moral 
subjects so far as they concern the temporal welfare of her peo- 
ple, as bound to her, and as connected with each other. She 
regards their welfare only as they live in a mortal sphere. As 
immortals, the State takes no cognizance of men, or as beings 
responsible to God for their secret character and relations to 
him. Yet she cannot be insensible to those views of God which 
on the one hand cherish the sense of duty to the State and to 
fellow-citizens, and those on the other which diffuse cheerful, 
salutary, and elevated views of life. Now, the State doubtless 
finds an ally in the Church, in giving salutary moral instruction 
to the people ; but among a free people, who may, if they choose, 
absent themselves and keep their children from all such instruc- 
tions, or who may hold and teach their children baneful ideas 
without State interference, it is extremely unwise to relegate the 
moral instruction of the people to religious or irreligious sects, 
or to parents avowedly criminal or voluntarily aloof from every 
moral influence. Even if all the citizens were church-goers, and 
the children all received Sabbath-school instruction, this would 
not be adequate : for there are some religious topics which it 
is incumbent on the State to teach decidedly, which churches 
may not chance to teach ; those topics being more necessary 
when viewed in connection with the State than in their connec- 



THE BIBLE AND THE MANUAL OF MORALS. 303 

tioii with a small community or a particular church. Take, for 
instance, suicide. We never heard Sabbath-school instructions 
touch on this point ; yet the State sees so many of her brilliant 
and of her wealthiest citizens, male and female, destroy them- 
selves, that it were well for her to read to all her pupils the 
story of Hagar. The gracious view of God there would counter- 
act the morbid state of mind of Goethe's " Sorrows of Werther," 
which has made, it is said, more suicides than any other book 
ever written.-^ The spirit of communism needs a glimpse of 
the early Pentecostal community; for, as one has well said, the 
difference between the two is this : " Communism says, ' All 
thine is mine ; ' Christianity, ' All mine is thine.' " So the 
whole matter of drunkenness and " drunkard-making," and 
defence of nefarious business, would be checked, if the State 
were to teach her children, from five to fifteen, that there is a 
God in heaven who sees and will punish. So the matter of 
the oppressions of capital and the oppressions of " strikes " 
and trades-unions should be viewed as if all such oppressions 
would meet a "just recompense of reward." To accomplish 
this end of which we speak, the child is to be taught, that 
during all his life, watching, controlling, rewarding him, there 
is One who is on the one hand Father, on the other hand 
moral Governor and Judge, who holds both sceptre and shield. 
All this, of course, without regard to eternity, but simply in tem- 
poral relations to State and fellow-citizens, just as Bishop War- 
burton, in the " Divine Legation," has it that Moses' state had 
no support from eternal, but only temporal rewards and sanc- 
tions of the Almighty. Taking no account of a future world, it 
is the clear way for the State to diminish its crime, and diffuse 
cheerful and elevated sentiments, by imprinting on her children, 
while she has them in the school, — and, be it remembered, she 
holds them nowhere else under her authoritative instructions, — 
that, in all their lives, the regard of One who is both Father and 
King is upon them. 

1 " A great many cases of self-murder came to Goethe's notice, in which the victims attrib- 
uted tkeir rash act to the influence of Werther. He was overwhelmed with letters from per- 
sons medit;.ting suicide." — J. Manning : Half-Truths and the Trtdh, p. 207. 



304 THE BIBLE AND THE MANUAL OF MORALS. 

4. God, as the God of the nation, should be recognized in 
the school. The Prussian maxim is the correct one, "What- 
ever we would have in the State we must have in the school- 
room." Our grand centennial utterances, it is cheering to see, 
are full of devout remembrance that " to Him all the shields of 
the earth belong." Winthrop told the people of Boston, in his 
fine peroration, that "If that second century of self-government 
is to go on safely to its close, or is to go on safely and jDrosper- 
ously at all, there must be some renewal of that old spirit of 
subordination and obedience to divine as well as human laws 
which has been our security in the past. There must be faith 
in something higher and better than ourselves. There must be 
a reverent acknowledgment of an unseen, but all-seeing, all- 
controlling Ruler of the universe. His word, his day, his house, 
his worship, must be sacred to our children, as they have been 
to their fathers ; and his blessing must never fail to be invoked 
upon our land and upon our liberties. The patriot voice which 
cried from the balcony of yonder old State House, when the 
Declaration had been originally proclaimed, ' Stability and per- 
petuity to American independence ! ' did not fail to add, ' God 
save our American States ! ' I would prolong that ancestral 
prayer. . And the last phrase to pass my lips at this hour, and 
to take its chance for remembrance or"oblivion in years to come, 
as the conclusion of this centennial oration, and the sum and 
summing-up of all I can say to the present or the future, shall be. 
There is, there can be, no independence of God : in him as a 
nation, no less than in him as individuals, ' we live and move, 
and have our being.' ' God save our American States ! ' " 

Whittier's magnificent Centennial Hymn, sublime and Ameri- 
can as Yosemite, and which seems like the lofty, leaping, crys- 
tal, rainbowed fall of Yosemite's waters from the verges of 
heaven, is full of recognition of God : — 

" Our fathers' God ! from out whose hand 
The centuries fall like grains of sand, 
We meet to-day, united, free, 
And loyal to our land and thee, 
To thank thee for the era done, 
And trust thee for the opening one. 



THE BIBLE AND THE MANUAL OF MORALS. 305 

Oh ! make thou us, through centuries long, 
In peace secure, and justice strong ; 
Around our gifts of freedom draw 
The safeguard of thy righteous law ; 
And, cast in some diviner mould, 
Let the new cycle shame the old." 

(2.) God^s RIGHTEOUSNESS should also have place in the school. 
By this expression is meant true righteousness, according to 
eternal standards of right and wrong, — righteousness in God's 
sight, righteousness as noticed and rewarded by him. It in- 
cludes morality, but as seen in the clearest divine light, as well 
as reverence and worship of the Supreme Being. 

Every one, of course, recognizes that morality is necessary 
in the State. Every reader of history knows that the old nations 
went to decay because the days of their incorruptible simplicity 
passed away, and because of their subsequent moral corruption. 
Every one knows how morals had declined in the time of the 
later Caesars, and Rome's imperial purple was sold to the high- 
est bidder. Every one is aware of the reason for the " decline 
and fall " of the universal empires. 

But it is taken for granted — most unwisely as we think — 
that sufficient morality will be absorbed or imbibed from some 
source, — from churches, from lectures, from the atmosphere of 
general moral excellence. 

It may be asked, But how is it that you lay such stress on 
the necessity of the State saving itself, when you, perchance, 
believe that it is religion a?id the Church which saves the State ? 
It is as "the befriending power," and as infusing virtue into 
individuals who then act as righteous citizens, that the Church 
saves the State. Then, as to why the State as well as the 
Church should strive for the State's salvation, is it not written, 
" Let every man bear his own burden,^^ as well as " Bear ye one 
another's burdens " } 

To us, we repeat, it is exceedingly unwise, and one of the 
unv/isdoms into which this age seems tending to fall, and in 
some degree has already fallen, — and that, too, with the his- 
tory of corruDt and dead nations before us, — to leave so- 



3o6 THE BIBLE AND THE MANUAL OF MORALS. 

momentous a matter as the morality of the State, on which, if 
there be a God, her life as a State depends, to the chance 
instructions of parties outside of her own authority, even though 
they be on so grand a scale, and of so potent an influence, as 
those of tlie Christian Church. This^ perhaps^ is the deepest 
point of divergence now between men who study this subject. Some 
think that the State is bound to secure that moral instruction in 
her schools, where only she is authoritative in this matter, which 
alone will keep her righteous and prosperous. Others fancy 
that the State can safely allow this morality in part to be 
farmed out to the churches, and in part to be totally neglected. 
Need it be said, that all these articles have been written on the 
first ground, which seems to us the only wise course, the only 
view to be entertained for a moment, that, as the State is to 
stand or fall by her morality or immorality, she must herself be 
strenuous that she secure morality enough to preserve her from 
destruction. Recklessness here is suicidal. This view is 
urgently commended to the profoundest thought of those who 
are reflecting on this important matter, or who are addressing 
the public ear or eye upon it. 

Some considerations are added, enforcing this point, which, 
it is hoped, may be pondered most deeply, and considered in the 
whole breadth and extent of the injurious effects hinted at, not 
only such as are now visible, but such as will result to the na- 
tion from the sowing and reaping of these tares for a hundred 
years. 

I. Some religious corporations — and fullest liberty, be it 
remembered, is given, in its sphere, to the religious society to 
teach almost anything — may teach what the State will consider 
false and destructive morality. Will the Jesuit, the Mormon, 
the Freelover, the Chinese, prove good farmers of the morality 
of the State? History makes us hesitant. On the 24th of 
August, 1572, says Tytler, "one-half of the French nation, with 
the sword in one hand and the crucifix in the other, fell with 
the fury of wild beasts upon their unarmed and defenceless 
brethren." *' The plot was laid with a dissimulation equal to 
the atrociousness of the design." "Thirty thousand fell by 
the sword," says the best authority. 



THE BIBLE AND THE MANUAL OF MORALS. 307 

"We thought of Seine's empurpled flood, 
And good Coligni's hoary hair all dabbled with his blood." 

" The Pope," says Father Daniel, " highly commended the zeal 
of this monarch, and the exemplary punishment which he had 
inflicted on the heretics. The parliament of Paris decreed an 
annual procession on St. Bartholomew's Day to offer up thanks 
to God." Lingard attempts in vain to explain away this massa- 
cre while the medal remains, — on one side the face and name, 
"Gregorius XIII. ;" on the other, "Ugonotorum strages," and 
an angel with crucifix and sword urging upon the fallen French- 
men. Plainer it could not be that it was a religious massacre. 
I know not whether the Papacy of to-day defends this plot ; but 
it is the boast and creed of this hierarchy that Rome never does 
wrong, and Rome never changes. Is this morality of " no 
faith with those of another creed " to enter into the State un- 
checked 1 Is the morality of Ravaillac to be taught this side 
the Atlantic ? Is that treacherous slaughter which once occurred 
on American soil to be repeated on American soil, when Ribaut 
and his band were cut down in cool blood, and Menendez hung 
their bodies to the trees of Florida, with this justification, " Not 
because they are Frenchmen, but because they are heretics, and 
enemies of God." The violation of the safe-conduct of Huss 
at the command of priests — is it to occur again.? These sad 
pages of history are not recalled to inflame American against 
American, but to show that the question may well arise, whether 
it is wise to commit the moral teaching of the State to Rome, 
v/hich plots such things, and justifies them ; Rome, which never 
does wrong; Rome, which never changes. Is language unjust in 
making the word Jesuitism a synonyme for " lubricity of morals," 
as De Quincey might say ? Is there a candid American Catho- 
lic, however disposed to venerate his "holy Church," who does 
not see that the State must teach her own morality, and not 
leave to Machiavellian Italy to sow seeds of perfidy which will 
bear fruitage in some future '"'' Strages Ungonotorum " ? Chimeri- 
cal the thought will be considered, that such things may be on 
the scroll of American history in 1976, and by a good Provi- 
dence they may not be. But is the State in any way guarantee- 



3o8 THE BIBLE AND THE MANUAL OF MORALS. 

ing herself against an American Saint Bartholomew within a 
hundred years ? And — for this is the point — shall the State 
forego the neutralizing effect of her own public instructions in 
morality, and give up the entire moral instruction of millions of 
her citizens to an Italian monarch across the seas ? Further- 
more, shall there be added to Jesuits the Freelovers, Mormons, 
and Chinese, as the chosen farmers of the morality of the re- 
public ? 

2. Some youth are outcasts, not in any religious society. 
The writer has no statistics before him ; but by high authority 
he is informed that from one-fourth to one-third of the people 
of Massachusetts are by constant habit absent from church. 
Larger is the proportion elsewhere. One would not underrate 
the religious influences in the very air of a Christian community; 
but many children evidently receive no systematic moral instruc- 
tion. The State has no right to force them to Church to receive 
moral training. There is OJie place, however, where, between five 
and fifteen years of age, she has them under her special control for 
purposes of intellectual and moral discipline. There she can 
train these gamins and outcasts to become good citizens. 

3. Some heads of families teach no morality, or they teach, 
substantially, immorality. 

This anecdote is more than a jeu d^esprit. " Father," said a 
boy, " do you believe in reading the Bible in schools ? " — " Cer- 
tainly, my son : why do you ask .'' " — " Because I knew you 
didn't believe in readinsf the Bible at home." 

Positively, on the other hand, immorality is taught. 

I do not need to speak of the teaching in low cellars, of thiev- 
ing and pocket-picking, and gambling and drinking. But, in 
many refined homes, the whole drift of conversation and living 
is an instruction and incentive to the child in " sinful gain and 
sinful spending." " Covetousness and luxury " are the moral 
lessons day after day reiterated. *' One of the meanest men," 
says Tenney, " that has lately walked the earth, said, ' Why do 
you wonder ? My father never praised me for any thing but 
saving half a penny.' "^ One would be curious to learn in what 

* Jubilee Essays. 



THE BIBLE AND THE MANUAL OF MORALS. 309 

early home atmosphere Tweed breathed. He is proof enough 
that the State cannot afford to dispense with sound practical 
instruction on righteous ways of getting and spending money. 
The State suffers : States have crumbled by "covetousness and 
luxury." "No man doth dissemble, lie, oppress, defraud, for love 
of poverty; but thousands do it for love of riches." "He that 
maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent." Shall not the 
State remember that " we belong not so much to an age as to a 
race loving money, and for it ready to commit all crimes " ? 
Yet this avarice is taught and imbibed in thousands of homes. 
Shall not the State, with the view of "whiskey rings" and "In- 
dian rings," and bribed legislators, feel that it rests directly on 
her to give the boys at her knee instructions on righteousness 
in money-concerns ? 

Murder is rife, and no wonder. Revenge is taught in some 
homes ; and, in some, passion is encouraged by example. Has 
the State, which suffers, no lessons to give on the ruling of the 
passions ? "^ 

How can the State find fault with peculation if she did not 
instruct the boy against it .'* Tweed might say, A moral sense I 
had, it is true, which I offended; the law I disregarded, and 
I suffer by it justly : but why does the State complain of what I 
am, and what I have done, when she never opened her lips in my 
childhood days to teach me and train me, nor made it her care 
whether anybody else taught me strict righteousness in acquir- 
ing wealth? Does one hazard much in conjecturing that New 
York lost that six millions, and many a million beside, because 
the State did not impress upon the boy Tweed, and the boys who 
grew up with him, that he must acquire wealth lawfully? 

4. Some topics are not taught systematically by churches or 
parents. Moralities important, some of them most important, to 
the State, are neglected. Suicide, the spirit of communism, fair 
play between capital and labor, have received mention. It is 
natural that some moralities should be neglected ; for it would 
seem almost impertinent for father or church to suppose it pos- 
sible that any in their circle should traffic in rum and opium 
and prostitution. But the State cannot be unaware that in the 



3IO THE BIBLE AND THE MANUAL OF MORALS. 

wide circle of her future citizens, in every large school, there are 
those who are germinating for this crime of nefarious trafficking, 
the parent of crimes and untold misery to the State. If every 
child were taught by the State, from his fifth to fifteenth year, 
that to drink and to sell intoxicating liquors are iniquitous, 
would there be in our land nearly one millio7t habitual drimk- 
ards, sixty thousand of which die annually, and nearly ^z'^ him- 
dred thousand druiikard-iiiakers ? At least, in that case, might 
the State applaud herself as a careful and resolute mother; 
while now she weakly looks aghast, and wrings her hands over 
crimes which she never trained her youth to abhor. 

Still, men are willing to run the fearful risks that the friction 
of morality neglected and immorality inculcated shall not finally 
stop the machine. The American people, part of them, have an 
unbounded presumption, and do not shrink from casting them- 
selves down from pinnacles, even where they see bones below. 
Bushnell, thirty years ago, gave a discourse, " Barbarism our 
great danger." One memorable example he adduces : " If it 
seems extravagant to speak of any such result, let it not be for- 
gotten that one emigrant family of the Saxon race has already 
sunk into barbarism since our history began. I speak of the 
Dutch Boers in South Africa. They are Calvinistic Protestants : 
they began the settlement at Cape Town in the year 165 1; 
and now they are virtually barbarians, for they are scarcely 
less wild in their habits than the Hottentots themselves." " A 
standing proof that Protestants, and they, too, of Saxon blood, 
may drop out of civilization, and take their place on the same 
level of ignorance and social brutality with the barbarous tribes 
of the earth. Let no American who loves his country refuse to 
heed the example." Wendell Phillips says, " It requires great 
faith to believe that we shall celebrate our second Centennial ; 
but I believe it, because I believe in God." 

It is not auspicious of a happy second Centennial that we 
commenced our second century with a monsoon of mobs in nine 
of our large cities, — and that in the temperate North, — some 
of which would have disgraced Paris. 

'''' Esto perpetua will not save us," says Anderson. 



THE BIBLE AND THE MANUAL OF MORALS. 311 

In this recapitulatory essay we advance to say, that, 

II. God and his righteousness should have place in 

THE school by THE BiBLE. 

Here we need do little more than to give an intelligible 
resume. A few arguments additional are interpolated. 

1. The Bible should be employed in recognizing God and 
fostering righteousness in the school, because it is now used for 
that purpose. This is on the logical ground, that, unless there 
is reason for a change, things should remair^as they are. So 
far as the Bible has been used, its influence has been beneficent. 
Great names have borne witness to this. Arguments must be 
of exceeding weight and cogency to persuade to such a revo- 
lution. 

2. The fathers of the republic instituted the present order 
of things. For more than two hundred years, the use of the 
Bible in schools has been sanctioned by our great statesmen. 
It is unwise to make a change in State polity, and disregard 
the wisdom of the succession of statesmen, without prevailing 
reasons. 

3. Some book is needful in stimulating to reverential worship. 
If the object be really to compass this end, the best thoughts 
of men in their highest moods should be chosen to awaken the 
mind to its best thoughts and feelings. Prof. Phelps says much 
to this point in the chapter of his unprinted lectures on " Study 
of Models." He reminds us that modern literature and art 
were born by the revival of the study of the ancient models, in 
composition, painting, and sculpture, of Greece and Rome. He 
dwells instructively on the " stimulus of a suggestive model." 
" It has become a standard among the expedients of self-cul- 
ture. Wirt mentions a friend who made such a daily use of 
Bolingbroke. Voltaire made a similar use of Massillon ; a sug- 
gestive fact, the infidel resorting to the noblest of the French 
preachers. Bossuet was accustomed to prepare his mind for 
any great effort by the study of Homer, lighting, as he said, 
his candle at the sun. Gray always read Spenser. Milton 
used a variety ; but his favorites were Homer and Euripides. 
Pope used Dryden as his constant aid to composition." These 



312 THE BIBLE AND THE MANUAL OF MORALS. 

all " chose models as immediate aids to their own labors." 
" The devout and contemplative ^ East " has one book greatly 
calculated to stir devotion. 

4. Some book should be used which may suggest, and by 
distinct and well-known examples illustrate, the lessons of right- 
eousness to be taught. These, by well-nigh universal consent, 
are found in the Scriptures. They are "profitable for instruc- 
tion in righteousness," even if, as we are about to propose, the" 
Scriptures be not Jaught, but only be read as the groundwork 
of moral teaching and the fountain of moral sentiments. 

5. This book is acknowledged to be the most successful 
attempt to describe the divine and the human in themselves 
and in their relations to each other. " They are revealed in 
comparison ; they are revealed in contrast ; in things similar, 
and in things dissimilar j the fountains of the great deep of 
human thought, of human action, are broken up ; and man, 
inward and outward, is contemplated, not in the dim taper-light 
of time, but the broad light of eternit}^" 

This book, therefore, contains vital, educating forces. 

6. The Bible should be used because it constantly suggests 
God as the great moral Being, and the great Rewarder of moral 
actions. Whether this book is infallible in its declarations of 
the ways in which God will reward good and punish evil," it is 
not needful to our argument to inquire ; but of this much, which 
is pertinent to our purpose, every one is aware, that the book 
makes impressive appeal to the universal sense that God is 
King and Judge of all. 

Other reasons for the use of the Bible are these : — 

7. The Bible is the mother of modern education. For the 
child not only to ignore the benefactions of the one who "gave 
birth and nurture, but to cast her out of doors, is shameful. 
Modern education should set a golden throne for its venerable 
mother^ its truly Alma Mater, the Scriptures. 

8. This book is intimately connected with the liberty of the 
State. From it sprung the idea of " a church without a bishop, 
and a state without a king." For though this book says, 
" Honor the king," "Put tham in mind to be subject to prin- 



THE BIBLE AND THE MANUAL OF MORALS. 313 

cipalities and powers, to obey magistrates," yet it also says^ 
that a kingdom is an inferior, worldly, oppressive, and burden- 
some form of government. " Howbeit," says God to Samuel, 
"solemnly protest unto them, and show them the manner of 
the king that shall reign over them." 

To this book is due the Sabbath,^ — " the holy day of free- 
dom, the holiday of despotism," says the wise observer before 
quoted. Pres. Hopkins's two propositions are, " First, A reli- 
gious observance of the Sabbath will secure the permanence of 
free institutions. Second, Without the Sabbath religiously 
observed, the permanence of free institutions cannot be 
secured." 

9. All the nations of Europe, the languages of Western civili- 
zation, hold this book, the Bible, as containing the sublimest, 
most righteous, most gracious views of the Divine Being. 

10. The Bible, early translated into all the languages of 
Europe, is that book whose language and diction in regard to 
God permeate all our literatures. 

11. The Bible is the book of the founders of our nation's 
institutions, — the book of Bradford, Carver, Winthrop, of Wash- 
ington, Sherman, and Ames. 

12. This book, of all religious volumes, in all climes, gives 
the truest cosmogony, the only one which is not open to ridi 
cule, and a view of God throughout which is sublime, and in no 
way below the teachings of advanced science. Such a literary 
cosmopolitan as Edward Everett, referring to the religious vol 
umes of other climes and races, speaks of " the extreme repul- 
siveness of those books." He says, that, with the scholar's 
literary thirst, he has several times tried to read the Koran. 
"Any thing more repulsive and uninviting than the Koran I 
have seldom attempted to peruse, even when taken up with 
these kindly feelings." "With such portions of the sacred books 
of the Hindoos as have fallen in my way the case is far worse." 
"The mythological system contained in them is a tissue of 
monstrosities and absurdities, by turns so revolting and nau- 
seous as to defy perusal." " Few things would do more to raise 

^ I Sam. viii. 2 Refer back to the Sabbath discussion. 



314' THE BIBLE AND THE MANUAL OF MORALS. 

the Scriptures in our estimation than to compare the Bible with 
the Koran and the Vedas."^ 

13. This book deserves the preference in the recognition of 
God in the school, because it contains the one, unique, perfect 
man, Jesus Christ, whose character enters widely and deeply 
into all modern philanthropy and ethics. 

Premising that the next point is secondary, we nevertheless 
add, that, 

III. The translation of the Bible made by King James, 
THE English version, should generally be the version 

WHICH IS ADOPTED AS THE STANDARD VERSION IN READING 
THIS BOOK IN THE SCHOOLS. 

This, indeed, is a minor point; and it is not necessary to 
press it. A fair mind will be willing to concede that other 
versions may be simultaneously used, — simultaneously even as 
to the utterance of reading; and that, where the majority shall 
prefer, another version should be used. For what are they but 
versions of the same book ? But, in general, the English ver- 
sion is to be preferred on these entirely unsectarian grounds. 

1. The English version is a direct translation, made with great 
care from the original languages. 

2. The English version is the translation which is used by 
scholars, orators, poets. 

3. The English version is the State version. It was made by 
the State, for the State. 

4. The English version is that generally used in the State, in 
legislature, courts, and State benevolent institutions. 

IV. A MANUAL OF MORALITY SHOULD ALSO BE PREPARED 
FOR USE IN SCHOOLS. 

For the instruction in morals, a manual is necessary. 

I. Some would say that the instruction should be scriptural, 
— explanations of the Scripture utterances on the various duties. 
In this method, the Bible being read, certain verses or sections 
of the reading would then be taken as the basis of comment 
and application by the teacher. 

Answer i. — While all admit that the Bible is a fountain of 

1 Works, ii. 672, 



THE BIBLE AND THE MANUAL OF MORALS. 315 

morality, few desire tlie exposition of tlie Scriptures in the 
school. 

Ans. 2. — The instructions in morals should be prepared 
by the State, and as little of instruction as possible be left to the 
discretion of the teacher. Thus only will the State secure the 
imparting of the moral lessons she deems needful for her wel- 
fare, without addition or subtraction ; thus she will secure 
uniformity in the subjects presented. Ample scope can be 
allowed the teacher in illustrating and enforcing the duties 
taught. 

2. Some would say, Let there be a manual prepared in two 
parts ; Part I. containing in full the Bible-readings for the year, 
and Part II. containing moral instructions. In this way, it might 
be averred, the prejudices of some against the appearance of 
the Bible itself in the school might be allayed, while substan- 
tially the same reverence and ri2;hteousness would be inculcated.- 

Answer i. — The very Book, the Bible itself, the parent of 
modern education, the fosterer of republics, should appear in 
the schoolroom. The Bible should have an hoJiored place in the 
school as oji the church pulpit, or in the " holy ark " of the syna- 
gogue. I would have the very desk on which the Bible is placed 
suggestive of the honor due to it. I would not have the Bible 
laid or thrown about on the teacher's desk among miscellaneous 
books. Somewhere on the platform I would have a choice 
little piece of furniture, wdth pedestal, column, and table, about 
eighteen inches square. On that, as in a place of honor before 
the school, the Bible should rest, to be suggestive of its place in 
Occidental worship, in modern literature, in American history. 

Edward Everett, in one of his great orations, raised in his 
hand, high above his head, a copy of Homer, as an emblem of 
the power of letters. The Bible itself, quite apart from its 
containing the gospel of salvation, but on account of its para- 
mount and indispensable power in morals, literature, politics, art, 
education, should be displayed in the schoolrooni as it is dis- 
played at the monarch's coronation. 

Ans. 2. — Any thing that would pave the way for the with- 
drawal of this book from the schoolroom should be avoided. 



3i6 THE BIBLE AND THE MANUAL OF MORALS. 



Ans. 3. — There would be no serious objection to such a 
manual for convenience of use, provided it were designated 
a Bible Manual^ and provided that the Bible itself were retained 
in its place of honor at the desk. 

3. By far the preferable way seems to be, to use the Bible, 
without note or comment^ for readings ; and to have a manual, 
separate a7id distinct, which shall contain instructions in morals. 
There should be, every year if desirable to change so often, a 
printed card of selected sections from the Bible for daily reading. 

The selections from the Scriptures can be made of great 
value. Though the writer has not spent much time on this 
part of the subject, a few selections are here indicated as 
specimens of what a more skilful hand could do in this depart- 
ment. Readings should generally not exceed twenty or thirty 
verses. Gen. i.. Creation. Gen. viii., Deluge. Gen. ix,, Rea- 
son for the Death Penalty. Gen. x., Peopling of the Earth. 
" History has its beginning in this ethnological table," says 
Johannes von Miiller. Exod. xx.. The Ten Commandments. 
Joshua i., Courage and Obedience, i Kings viii., Solomon's 
Prayer at the Temple, i Sam. xv.. Disobedience and Rejec- 
tion of Saul. I Sam. xx.. Friendship of David and Jonathan. 
Neh. vi., Esther (selections). Daniel, most of it, especially ii. 
31-49, The Image of Gold; vii., The Beasts ; vii., Alexander's 
Empire. Matt, v., vi., vii.. Sermon on the Mount. Matt, xxiii. 
1-12, Humility, i Cor. xiii.. Charity. John's Epistle i (many 
parts). Revelation, Descriptions of Heaven. These are only 
a few chance specimens. 

Job, Isaiah, and the Psalms will furnish abundant selections 
of a liturgical and devotional character. Proverbs and Eccle- 
siastes are of course, of themselves, almost a manual of wise 
conduct. A book of carefully collected and unsectarian hymns 
should be compiled. 

The manual should consist of lessons, forty perhaps in num- 
ber, one for every week in the year, on the various moral duties. 
Each duty should be explained, enforced, and illustrated by 
standard and effective examples from ancient and modern 
history and biography. The manual should, of course, be 



THE BIBLE AND THE MANUAL OF MORALS. 317 

prepared with the greatest care and moral earnestness by some 
of the best men in the State, yet with circumspection in exclud- 
ing every thing sectarian. 

This committee should consist of the most earnest moral men, 
yet the broadest-minded and most catholic in the State. We 
take the liberty to suggest a few names, not to give a complete 
list, but to show the kind of men whom the State should employ 
in so important a work. Of course we omit a great many names 
as good as those which we give : — 

Rev. Phillips Brooks ; A. P. Peabody, D.D. ; James Freeman 
Clarke, D.D. ; E. K. Alden, D.D. ; George E.Lorimer, D.D.; 
B. K. Peirce, D.D. j A. A. Miner, D.D. ; Archbishop Williams ; 
Father Robert Fulton ; Rabbi Lasker ; Rev. Charles B. Rice ; 
Rev. E. P. Tenney (now President of Colorado College); Rev.. 
George L. Chaney ; Miss Jane H. Stickney ; Miss Annie E. 
Johnson of Bradford Seminary ; Miss E. P. Peabody ; Mrs. 
Cowles of Ipswich Seminary ; the Misses McKeen of Andover 
Seminary, and others ; Hon. John D. Philbrick ; John W. Dick- 
inson Esq. ; the principals of the several normal schools ; the 
Presidents of colleges, past and present, not forgetting Thomas 
Hill, D.D., and Mark Hopkins, D.D. ; Hon. Alexander H. 
Rice, Hon. Henry L. Pierce, Hon. Edward L. Pierce, Hon. 
E. R. Hoar, Hon. George F. Hoar, Hon. George S. Boutwell, 
Hon. A. H. Bullock, &c. 

This committee, of course, must have a sub-committee. That sub- 
committee would have such important duties as these : — 

1. To decide upon the forty or more topics. 

2. To study them as to the proper moral view of them, with 
limitations, &c. 

3. To prepare the didactic matter. 

4. To prepare the illustrative matter. This, of course, is one 
of the most important duties of the preparation, and will require 
wide and patient research in the field of moral anecdote and of 
history, and great judgment in selection. 

5. To prepare the interrogatory matter. 

6. To prepare all this matter with reference to its simulta- 
neous use by scholars of all ages, from five to fifteen, perhaps in 
three series. 



3t8 the bible and the manual of morals. 

The field is comparatively a new one. Yet there have been a 
few manuals of morals, not so many nor so established in public 
regard as one would suppose would have been the case, con- 
sidering these words of Horace Mann : " Some work on morals 
for common schools, which shall excite the sympathies as well 
as the intellect, which shall make children love virtue as well as 
understand what it is, is the greatest desideratum of our schools." 

One of the best manuals is a little book by Miss A. Hall, 
published by John P. Jewett, 1850, entitled, "A Manual of 
Morals for Common Schools." On the titlepage are these 
lines, which fairly indicate the high purpose of the author : — 

" 'Tis a fond yet a fearful thing to rule 

O'er the opening mind in the village school : 
Like wax ye can mould it in the form ye will ; 
What ye write on the tablet remains there still ; 
And an angeVs work is not more high 
Than aiding tofortn one^s destiny.''^ 

There is much valuable material in the " Moral Instructor," by 
Jesse Torrey, Jr., which received the commendation of Pres. 
John Adams in 1820. 

There are books which should be consulted as containing 
valuable didactic or illustrative material, such as Dr. Wayland's 
'' Moral Science," Dymond's " Essays on Morality," Whewell's 
" Elements of Morality," Peabody's " Manual of Moral Philoso- 
phy," Whately's " Lessons on Morals," Sullivan's " Moral Class- 
Book," Paley's " Moral and Political Philosophy," Henry Ow- 
gan's " Manual of Ethics " (the chapter on " The Cardinal Vir- 
tues "), Silvio Pellico's " The Duties of Men" (a choice little 
volume from the Italian prisoner), with some of the books used 
in Kindergartens, such as " Sandford and Merton." Nor should 
one forget to glean w^hole " handfuls " from ancient works, — 
Plutarch's " Moral Writings," and Anecdotes from Plutarch's 
Lives, if there is such a book ; Cicero's De Officiis, Seneca's 
Morals, and the writings of Orientals, — Confucius and others. 
One should not neglect Emerson, his superlative "Essays on 
the Conduct of Life," and, in the other volumes, the series of 
Essays, History, Self-Reliance, &c. Carlyle and others who 



THE BIBLE AND THE MANUAL OF MORALS. 319 

have striven to stir men should not escape the glance of this 
committee. Charles Sumner, with his grand moral nature, said 
grand moral things. Nor should we forget the poets ; since one 
has well said, " Poetry is beautiful truth ; " and a poet has said 
of some poems, that they are 

" Thoughts that enrich the life-blood of the world." 

Our own poets, Lowell, Bryant, Longfellow, should be in the 
minds of that committee. We are grateful that our best poets 
have written what is sweet with moral goodness. Milton, Shak- 
speare, Mrs. Browning, and others might give some beams of 
their glory to such a book, intended to quicken youth to higher 
views of duty. 

The writer, though not ambitious to do more than roughly 
sketch this part of his work, has thrown together a sufhcient 
number of topics to show what this manual should attempt to 
accomplish, — Reverence and Worship of God ; Benevolence 
(Howard, Clarkson) ; Respect for Aged, Superiors, Parents, 
Teachers (Spartans in Athenian Theatre, Napoleon's Mother, 
Teacher's Father and School Sleighride) ; Friendship (Damon 
and Pythias) ; Kindness to Animals (Stories from " Our Dumb 
Animals ") ; Care of Body ; Temperance ; Chastity ; Self-Con- 
trol ; Self-Respect ; Docility (Agassiz) ; Modesty (Isaac New- 
ton) ; Self-Improvement ; Industry ; Order ; Punctuality (Wash- 
ington) ; Self-Knowledge ; Reciprocity ; Deference ; Honesty 
(Colbert and the Merchant) ; Use of Public Money (John Quin- 
cy Adams, Charles Sumner) ; Discharge of Trusts ; Righteous 
Business; Righteous Trading; Legitimate Business Sagacity 
with God's Blessing (Jacob and Laban) ; Reciprocal Duties of 
Capital and Labor ; Promise-Keeping ; Payment of Debts ; 
Sabbath Observance ; Sacredness of Life ; Penalties of Crime; 
Choosing of Magistrates ; Duties of Magistrates to God and 
the People ; Filial Duties ; Parental Duties ; Peace and War ; 
Reciprocal Duties of Nations ; Patriotism ; &c. 

We believe we say only what is right and fitting and grace- 
ful in suggesting — entirely unprompted, and at our own 
thought — that the excellent publishing-house which gives to the 



320 THE BIBLE AND THE MANUAL OF MORALS. 

public this idea of a manual of morals should have given to it 
by the State the publication of the manual itself. It is a kind 
of justice in accordance with Gen. xli. 38-40. 

Having considered at such length the material of the devo- 
tional and ethical exercise, we need to spend but few words 
upon, 

Second, The manner of the devotional and moral 
EXERCISE. This has been foreshadowed and almost stated in 
the account of the devotional and instructive material. 

A preliminary remark, however, is of great importance. The 
devotional exercise should no longer skulk : it ought to stand forth 
and erect in its full ma^ihood stature. This exercise is now like 
Charles Edward, having the name of king, yet his title disputed, 
and he called by his enemies the " Pretender," hiding in for- 
ests and ravines : it should be like a monarch on his rightful 
throne. It is a common remark among school committees and 
teachers, that the exercise now amounts to little. This is for 
two reasons. First, because the educationalists seem not to 
have thought themselves clear as to whether they have a right 
to recognize God, and teach righteousness in the school, and 
they therefore proceed with the timidity and half-heartedness of 
the undecided ; and, second, because they have never set them- 
selves to estimate how much can be made of this exercise for 
the benefit of the State. At one of the schools which the 
writer attended, the honored principal, who conducted the devo- 
tions with sufficient reverence, seemed, however, hardly to 
observe, in his mechanical reading of the Scripture, how often 
he informed us that " at that season there were some who 
told him of the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with 
their sacrifices." All this should be changed. Alfred should 
leave the herdsman's hut and the umbrageous rendezvous, and 
take his regal place in the palace of the metropolis. The devo- 
tional exercise should take its place openly, firmly, fully, and 
decidedly, not only as one who has a right to occupy a place, 
but of one who is conscious of being on a throne of power, — Det 
gratia Rex, — and a seat of usefulness, direct and instant in its 
benefactions, yet which are also so far reaching and potent and 



THE BIBLE AND THE MANUAL OF MORALS. 321 

divine, that they are likely to be the very salvation of the State. 
The devotional exercise is to come to the youth in our schools 
quietly yet authoritatively, like some angel, like some Sandalphon, 
intrusted with extraordinary power, — the mission to bring this na- 
tion forward to its second Centennial. 

The daily exercise should occupy about fifteen minutes. It 
should consist of the Scripture-reading for the day, and prayer, 
and, if possible, a hymn. The Scripture-reading may consist, 
following the table of sections, of a selection of considerable 
length (thirty verses), either didactic, historical, or devotional; 
or it may consist of a brief section for instruction, and a brief 
psalm. The table is to regulate this. There may be a golden 
text or passage for the day. 

The reading may be conducted variously. The teacher alone 
may read ; or the teachers and scholars may read alternately, in 
which case the child may simultaneously (in utterance we mean : 
there will be not so much indistinctness as in the pleasant jar- 
gon of an Episcopal service) read the Douai version if he choose; 
or the children may read, in rotation, each a verse, in which case 
also, each, unblamed, should read his own version ; or the read- 
ing may be responsive, — the boys, for example, in a mixed 
school, reading one verse, and the girls reading the next, or 
one part of the school reading in response to the other. In all 
these, each should freely use his own version. 

The hymn, of course, should be unsectarian, patriotic, or reli- 
gious, such as "Nearer, my God, to Thee," and " My Country, 'tis 
of thee." Vinet is hardly correct when he says, " It would be 
impossible to unite, even once in a century. Christians and Deists 
in a common worship. Such a worship would, in truth, be only 
that of- Deism, into which Christians would be constrained to de- 
scend, without the possibility of elevating their companions." 

On the contrary, the heart can truly worship with the Deist, 
and then dilate to worship the God of revelation, almost as 
easily as the pupil of the eye dilates according to the degree of 
light. We worship in " Nearer, my God, to Thee," with the Deist, 
although we can readily expand the soul to sing the new stanza, 
" Christ alone beareth me." Allusions to Christ, especially 



322 THE BIBLE AND THE MANUAL OF MORALS. 

where Jews are present, should be in the nature of recognition, 
and not of worship. The Lord's Prayer may be the usual 
prayer. There may be special prayers for occasions, as for ex- 
hibition, first and last days, death of scholars or teachers. The 
Israelites, in their liturgy, have some prayers which are religious 
and patriotic, which would be admirable for school use. The 
Episcopal liturgy would furnish choice extracts in the composi- 
tion of prayers. 

The exercise in the manual of morals should be as frequent 
as once a week. An hour might profitably be given to it. The 
text of the lesson should be well studied, and carefully recited ; 
after which scholars might discuss the topic freely, under their 
teacher's direction. Much interest and effectiveness would be 
added to this moral study from the fact that all the scholars in 
a commonwealth might be studying the same topic together, 
such as Lawful Business, Use of Public Money ; while the news- 
papers of the day, as in the case of the International Biblical 
Lessons, might strive which should furnish the most valuable 
discussion of the topic, and the most interesting illustrative ma- 
terials. Such a devotional service would no longer seem unim- 
portant, or unworthy the striving to maintain ; but a few years 
would place it among the permanent American institutions ; 
God would be honored, and his blessing invoked ; righteousness 
would flourish, — " instead of the thorn, the fir-tree ; instead of 
the brier, the myrtle ; " the tone of public morality would be 
immeasurably elevated ; " whatsoever things are true, honest, 
just, pure, lovely, of good report, whatever virtue, whatever 
praise," would be more in the thought and the life ; we should 
have a " nationality with a quickened conscience j " 

"And, cast in some diviner mould, 
Will the new cycle shame the old." 



THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 



THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RE- 
LIGION. 



In the year 1755, John Howard, having recently laid his wife 
in her last resting-place, set out from England to make a tour 
of the Continent. It was the year of the Lisbon earthquake. 
For that city he sailed. '" The ship was taken by a French pri- 
vateer. Howard was made prisoner. The treatment he met was 
inhuman. For forty hours he was kept with the other prison- 
ers on board the French vessel, without water, and with hardly 
a morsel of food. They were then carried into Brest, and com- 
mitted to the castle. They were flung into a dungeon ; and, after 
a further period of starvation, ' a joint of mutton was at length 
thrown into the midst of them, which, for the want of accommo- 
dation of so much as a solitary knife, they were obliged to tear 
to pieces, and gnaw like dogs.' There was nothing in the 
dungeon to sleep on, except some straw ; and in such a place, 
and with such treatment, he and his fellow-prisoners remained 
a week." He was then removed to Morlaix. " But," says 
Bayne,^ " he did not remain idle. The sufferings he had wit- 
nessed while inmate of a French prison would not let him rest. 
He had seen something amiss, something unjust, something 
which pained his heart as a feeling man. His English sense of 
order and of work was outraged. There was something to be 
done, and he set himself to do it. He collected information 
respecting the state of English prisoners of war in France. He 

1 Peter Bayne, Christian Life, 102 : Howard and the Rise of Philanthropy. 

325 



326 THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND REIIGION. 

found that his own treatment was part, and nowise a remarkable 
part, of a system ; that many hundreds of these prisoners had 
perished through sheer ill-usage, and that thirty-six had been 
buried in a hole at Dinan in one day. In fact, he discovered 
that he had come upon an abomination and iniquity on the face 
of the earth, which, strangely enough, had been permitted to go 
on unheeded until it had reached that frightful excess. He 
learned its extent, and departed with his information for Eng- 
land. He was permitted to cross the Channel on pledging his 
word to return if a French officer was not exchanged for him," 
By his exertions, the inmates of the three prisons soon put their 
feet on the soil of their native land. " Howard modestly re- 
marks, that perhaps his sufferings on this occasion increased his 
sympathy with the inhabitants of prisons." 

Returned to England, Howard married again, felicitously. 
After a delightful seven years spent in Cardington, which, under 
their fostering care, blossomed like the rose, his beloved wife 
died (1765). "Not long after her death, he heard the call which 
bade him leave the wells and the palm-trees of rest to take his 
road along the burning sand of duty." 

In 1773 he was appointed sheriff of Bedford. He was struck 
and amazed at the condition of the jails. In his plain, direct, 
penetrating way, he sought information ; then began to go be- 
yond the county in search of prison abuses ; next crossed over 
to the Continent, and made wide researches; and in 1777 he 
published his first book on the " State of Prisons in England 
and Wales." That has been called ^'' the beginniiig of prison 
science^ Again and again he visited Europe, even to Constan- 
tinople and distant Russia. Invited by the Empress Catherine 
to visit the palace, he declined, saying that he had come to the 
capital to visit, not palaces, but prisons. " I cannot name this 
gentleman," says Burke,-^ 'Svithout remarking that his labors and 
writings have done much to open the eyes and hearts of man- 
kind. He has visited all Europe, not to survey the sumptuous- 
ness of palaces or the stateliness of temples ; not to make 
accurate measurements of the remains of ancient grandeur, nor 

* Speech at Guildhall in Bristol, 1780. 



THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 327 



to form a scale of the curiosity of modern art; not to collect 
medals or collate manuscripts; but to dive into the depths of 
dungeons ; to plunge into the infection of hospitals ; to survey 
the mansions of sorrow and pain; to take the gauge and dimen- 
sions of misery, depression, and contempt ; to remember the for- 
gotten, to attend to the neglected, to visit the forsaken, and to com- 
pare and collate the distresses of all men in all countries. His 
plan is original, and it is as full of genius as it is of humanity. It 
was a voyage of discovery, a circumnavigation of charity. Al- 
ready the benefit of his labor is felt more or less in every country," 

In seventeen years — he was sixty years eld when he declined 
Catherine's invitation — he travelled fifty thousand miles, and 
spent orre hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars from his 
own purse. It was John Howard's strong sense of the call of 
God to this mission, and his strong faith as a disciple of his 
divine Master, which connected his name immortally with pris- 
ons. For his epitaph he wished the simple words, " My hope 
is in Christ." 

Religion and Prisons : there was a still older connection, in the 
words of him whom Christendom recognizes as Master, " Sick 
and in prison, and ye came unto me." He thus indicated that it 
was natural for a religion which should be the outflow of his 
spirit to go into prisons to find and relieve sickness and distress. 

Religion, too, has established hospitals. Arvine tells us that 
" the first hospital for the reception of the diseased and infirm 
was founded at Edessa, in Syria, by the sagacious and provident 
humanity of a Christian Father. The history of this memorable 
foundation is given by Sozomen in his life of Ephrem Syrus." 
By the venerable deacon of that city, and at his expense, three 
hundred beds were set in the porticoes of the city for the recep- 
tion of the fever patients. The poor, also, she has ever cared 
for. " Only they would," said Paul, " that we should remember 
the poor ; which thing I also was forward to do." The blind, 
the inebriate, the paupers, the bereft of reason, and the idiotic, 
she has ever deemed it a part of her vocation to relieve, whether 
single, or collected in establishments. '*Pure religion before 
God and the Father is to visit the widows and the fatherless in 
their affliction." 



328 THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 

Ujiofficial^ as thus far considered, is this connection of reli- 
gion with the afflicted and criminal. But now we find that the 
State — and that, too, among a people jealous of every thing 
like the connection of State and Church — has given this " be- 
friending power," as Coleridge might call it, an official place in 
the person of a chaplain, and religious opportunity in a "divine 
service," and has instructed this power to take general and 
particular measures promotive of its ends and purposes. 

The history of chaplaincies remains still to be written. The 
materials accessible are not abundant. The main lessons which 
such a history would force home upon us are these : the ear- 
nestness with which the best men, who, like Howard, have under- 
stood prisons, ships, regiments, &c., have advocated .the reli- 
gious chaplaincy ; second^ the great value in experience of such 
a chaplaincy, whether on sea or on land ; third, the general idea 
of the chaplaincy, that the office should be governmental ; and, 
fourth, the general, though not universal, idea of the chaplaincy, 
that the office should be held by one only. Perhaps for Ameri- 
cans it should be added, as the historic lesson, that the unsecta- 
riaji chaplaincy is American, rooted among the institutions by the 
fathers, Madison and Sherman, and fostered by our great states- 
men ; by Webster, for example. ' 

The materials are sufficient to show these historic lessons, 
though not enough, perhaps, to illustrate them in an interesting 
manner. 

The proper history oi prison chaplaincies is very recent. Lati- 
mer, as early as Edward Sixth's time, encouraged them, as 
something not yet realized. Philanthropic ministers, like Kil- 
pin in Queen Elizabeth's time, had a chance visit and godly 
exhortation for the prison. The early Methodists exhibited 
their love by "remembering those in bonds." About 1700 
there >vcre few ministers in prisons, and these generally infe- 
rior, not to say unworthy men. They were appointed by the 
prison-officers, or were called in by the jailer. Dr. Bray, in 
1702, has an "Essay towards the Reformation of Prisons, New- 
gate, &c. : " he refers to "ministers of prisons." 

Chaplaincies became an institution of government by statute, 



THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 329 

13th of George III., or 1773, and have continued uninterrupted 
since that time. This, we believe, is the oldest statute extant 
on the subject: "Whereas there is no provision made bylaw 
for the appointment of proper ministers to officiate in the sev- 
eral county gaols within that part of Great Britain called Eng- 
land and the principality of Wales ; and whereas the appointment 
of ministers to such gaols with a proper salary, for the due 
execution of their duty as clergymen, would alleviate the dis- 
tress of the persons under confinement, and would greatly 
contribute to the purposes of morality and religion." Observe 
in this earliest statute, under a State, too, which had a State 
religion, how broad and unsectarian are the purposes of the 
proposed chaplaincy under government. The pay of chaplains 
was ^50. Howard's first report was in 1777. He expresses in 
the most emphatic words that there should be a chapel in a 
prison, and a chaplain who should be a man of living and 
active piety. " Hanway, Howard, and Paul," says Clay, " all 
insisted on the necessity of able, earnest, and constant religious 
ministrations in prisons." ^ All chaplains, we believe, agree with 
Chaplain Kingsmill, "That which is reformatory in the highest 
degree^ Christian instruction in the hands of Christian men." 
Before 1830 there were few chaplains' reports. The character 
of the chaplaincies has been greatly improved, and the chap- 
laincy has received more of the honor which is due to- it. 56th 
of Geo. HI., an act was passed increasing the duties and pay of 
chaplains. In 1823 by a new act, the salary of Clay, for exam- 
ple, was raised from ;^ioo to ^250. At the time of Clay's 
appointment (182 1), there was as yet no school in the prison. 
" The prison-parson, at that period, still ranked rather low in the 
scale of clerical gradations. Half a century earlier^ any needy 
priest of damaged character was thought good enough to minis- 
ter among rogues."^ "On a week-day he was ready to crack a 
bottle or shuffle a pack with his flock ; on a Sunday he mumbled 
a service and sermon to them in one of the day-rooms." ^ 

"In our time," says Kingsmill,. "probably no part of the 
Church is served by more excellent, faithful, and painstaking 

* Clay's Memoir, loi. ^ Ibid., loi. 8 ibid., 17. 



33 o THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 

clergymen than the prisons of England." It was said of Chap- 
lain Clay, that he knew more of the working-classes than any 
other man living. It is a mistake that any minister can make a 
chaplain. Thomas Starr King says, "To deal with criminals 
for the purpose of reformation is a task requiring special apti- 
tude. You may make soldiers, you may make administrators, 
you may make clergymen, you may even, to a great extent, make 
schoolmasters, out of the materials of ordinary humanity : but 
chaplains or governors of jails, and conductors of reformatory 
schools, are like poets, — you must find them ; you cannot man- 
ufacture them. Their original endowments and qualities must 
be peculiar, or they will not succeed." 

In 1853 Mr. Lucas in Parliament advocated Roman-Catholic 
chaplains, as they had for a long time acted in Ireland, and in 
the penal colonies since Lord Derby's administration of the 
colonial government. He was not successful in changing the 
ancient policy of one govermental chaplain. We are not aware 
that any change has since taken place in England from this tra- 
ditional policy. At that time the law read as, we believe, now : 
" If any prisoner shall be of a religious persuasion differing from 
that of the Established Churchy a minister of such persuasion^ at 
THE SPECIAL REQUEST OF SUCH PRISONER, shall be allowed to visit 
hi7n,^^ dzc} It would be interesting to penetrate the history of 
the penal colonies, and see what wonderful tra?isformations had 
there, or on the transport-ships, been effected by chaplains, such 
as Dr. Vanderkemp in " The Hillsborough," Dr. Browning, and 
Rev. Thomas Rogers.^ So marked were these, that the lieuten- 
ant-governor of Botany Bay said, in 1839, "^ ^™ convinced that 
were ;z^2,ooo per annum expended by her Majesty's Government 
in supporting ten pious and zealous ministers, to be employed 
in the interior of this colony, in preaching daily, not in churches, 
but to the convicts in the houses of the settlers, the benefit to be 
derived from such a measure would be very great." ^ We com- 
mend to the reader the excellent memoir of John Clay, as illus- 
trating the possible usefulness of a chaplain. 

Chaplai7icies in legislative bodies have existed from the earliest 

* Kingsmill , 202. 2 Klngsmill, chap. vil. ^ Ibid., 156. 



THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 331 

period of our national life. The Continental Congress met on 
the 5th of September, 1774, in Carpenters' Hall, Philadelphia. 
Peyton Randolph of Virginia was speaker. "It was proposed to 
open the sessions with prayer. Some of the members thought 
this might be inexpedient, as all the delegates might not be able 
to join in the same form of worship. Up rose Samuel Adams, 
in whose great soul there was not a grain of sham. He was a 
strict Congregationalist. 'I am no bigot,' he said: ^ I can hear 
a prayer fr 0171 a r/ian of piety and virtue, whatever may be his cloth, 
provided he is at the same tiine a friend to his country.^ On his 
motion, Rev. Mr. Duche, an Episcopal clergyman of Philadel- 
phia, was invited to act as chaplain. Mr. Duche accepted the 
invitation." " He appeared next morning, with his clerk and 
in his pontifical, and read several prayers in the established 
form ; and then read the collect for the seventh day of Septem- 
ber, which was the thirty-fifth psalm. You must remember this 
was the morning after we heard the horrible rumor of the can- 
nonade of Boston. I never saw greater effect upon an audience. 
It seemed as if Heaven had ordained that psalm to be read on 
that morning. 

"After that, Mr. Duche, very unexpectedly to everybody, 
struck out into an extemporary prayer, which filled the bosom 
of every man present. I must confess I never heard a better 
prayer, or one so well pronounced. Episcopalian as he is, Dr. 
Cooper never prayed with such fervor, such ardor, such earnest- 
ness and pathos, and in language so elegant and sublime, for 
America, for Congress, for the Province of Massachusetts Bay, 
and especially the town of Boston. It had an excellent effect 
upon everybody here. I must beg you to read that psalm." ^ 

That same clergyman was afterwards appointed chaplain of 
the American Congress. He had such an appointment five days 
after the declaration of independence. 

Dec. 22, 1776, Dec. 13, 1784, chaplains were chosen; and on 
Feb. 29, 1788, it was resolved that two chaplains should be ap- 
pointed. So far the old Congress.^ 

* Letter from John Adams to Mrs. Adams, Sept. 16, 1774. 

' Lorenzo D. Johnson : Government Chaplains, New York, 1856. 



332 THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 

Samuel Adams struck the true key-note for all time, in 
America, of unsectarian chaplaincies ; and in Congress there 
have been chaplains, " Methodist, Baptist, Episcopalian, Pres- 
byterian, Congregation alist. Catholic, Unitarian, and others." 

The first Congress under the Constitution began March 4, 
1789. Almost as soon as a quorum was obtained, on the 9th of 
April, a committee on chaplains was appointed. It was decided 
to have two, of different denominations, each alternating between 
House and Senate. Washington's first speech was read to the 
House May i ; and the first business after that speech was the 
appointment of Dr. Linn as chaplain. Three out of six of that 
committee — Madison, Ellsworth, and Sherman — had been on 
the Constitutional Committee, and understood perfectly the Ameri- 
can ideas. The law of 1789 was passed in compliance with their 
plan. The chaplaincy is American^ according to the fathers. 
This law was re-enacted in 18 16. 

It is interesting to reflect that the first public prayer on hoard 
ship was probably made by Noah, and the first service in cajnp 
conducted by Abraham. Moses praying, with Aaron and Hur 
(Miriam's husband) holding up his hands, is probably the oldest 
extant example of prayer during battle. An interesting service 
of encouragement to battle is commanded in Deut. xx. 2-4 : 
" And it shall be, when ye are come nigh unto the battle, that 
the priest shall approach and speak unto the people, and shall 
say unto them. Hear, O Israel ! ye approach this day unto battle 
against your enemies : let not your hearts faint, fear not, and do 
not tremble, neither be ye terrified because of them ; for the 
Lord your God is he that goeth with you, to fight for you 
against your enemies, to save you." Prayer and hymn have 
often been raised to God before battle, notably by the army of 
Gustavus Adolphus, and by the Scotch army at Bannockburn. 
McDonnough also read service previous to the naval engage- 
ment on Lake Champlain. 

Of the necessity for chaplains in army and navy there can be 
no doubt. Our aaval chaplain friend says, " After an experi- 
ence of ten years, I cannot understand how a ship " (carrying, 
as they do,, from six hundred to one thousand men of all nation- 



THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 2>Z?i 

alities, and apart from restraints of society) " can be much better 
than a hell, without a chaplain. Of about one-eighth of the crew 
he makes a nucleus, and through them exercises influence upon 
the rest." " A chaplain can be useful every minute of his time." 

Movements are on foot for great improvements in our naval 
chaplaincies, which will gladden many hearts. 

In England, "Chambers' Journal" informs us, there have been 
chaplains for many generations ; but the system was re-organized 
and improved in 1795. "//? recettf years, ''^ — observe, this was 
not the original policy, — " Roman-Catholic and Presbyterian 
chaplains have been also appointed." " The chaplains belong, 
not to the regiments, but to the staff, so as to be readily 
available. At home they are attached to military stations ; in 
the field they are located at headquarters, at the hospitals, and 
with divisions." "They visit the sick at the hospitals, and 
examine and encourage the regimental schools. Among the 
wooden huts of Aldershott camp a church has been built, which 
is rendered available for chaplains of different religious denomi- 
nations in succession." In 1796 there was a chaplaincy-gen- 
eral, which was abolished by the Duke of Wellington, but 
revived in 1846. It is one of the eight departments under the 
new organization of the War Office. He assists the War Office 
in selecting chaplains. There are seventy-eight chaplains on 
staff. In the navy, every ship in commission, down to and in- 
cluding fifth-rates, has a chaplain (1873-74). There are eighty- 
three commissioned chaplains. " Chaplains perform divine 
service at stated times on shipboard, visit the sick sailors, and 
assist in maintaining moral discipline among the crew." 

" Napoleon," it is said, " was obliged to establish chaplains 
for his army, in order to their quiet, while making his winter 
quarters in the heart of an enemy's country, and that army had 
been drenched in the infidelity of the French Revolution." 

As to American chaplaincies, the only book we have found is 
" Chaplains of the General Government," by Lorenzo D. John- 
son (1856). He quotes the report of Hon. James Meacham, 
which recites facts showing the national policy of America: 
** Chaplains were appointed for the Revolutionary army on its 



334 THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 

organization. Congress ordered, May 27, 1777, that there 
should be one chaplain for each brigade of the army, nominated 
by the brigadier-general, and appointed by Congress, with the 
same pay as colonel ; and, on the i8th of September following, 
ordered chaplains to be appointed to the hospitals in the sev- 
eral departments." We find provision for chaplains in the acts 
of 1791, 1812, and 1838. "By the last, one chaplain was ap- 
pointed to each brigade in the army." There are also chap- 
lains for forts and military stations. These also act as school- 
masters, — " preaching schoolmasters " they have been called. 
In our late war, each regiment had a chaplain commissioned. 
How useful they were, many can recall from their recollections 
of several years, and all can read in the life of Arthur Fuller, 
who was killed at Fredericksburg, after crossing on the pon- 
toons. It was of Fuller that one wrote, what might apply to 
many a chaplain : — ■ 

" Hero and saint ! enrolled upon the page of history, 
Telling of deeds sublime to future ages, 

Thy name shall be ; 
And, better still, the Lamb's resplendent volume 

Thy name shall bear, 
Heading perchance a long and brilliant column 

Of heroes there." 

One is not surprised to find that chaplains have done inci- 
dental services of no inconsiderable importance. It was an 
army-chaplain (Rev. William Burnett, Fort Columbus, Govern- 
or's Island, near New- York City, 1838), eminently successful in 
drawing soldiers from intemperance, who obtained from Gen. 
Cass, secretary of war, the order that spirit-rations should be 
abolished, and tea and coffee rations should be substituted. 
Rev. Walter Colton wrote several books which awaken interest 
in the sailor, — "Ship and Shore," "Deck and Port," "Three 
Years in California." He built the first schoolhouse in Cali- 
fornia, and was the first (through "The North American," 
Philadelphia) to make known to the residents of the Atlantic 
States the gold discovery of that country. Rev. George Jones, 
while on leave of absence, made a tour of discovery in South 
America. 



THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 335 

These few facts will suffice as to the history of chaplain- 
cies. 

This measure, the appointment of chaplains, no doubt ap- 
proves itself to the inner sense of all men as right and excel- 
lent, for the advantage of all, and in no way infringing the 
conscience of any. But the grounds for this inner sense of 
approval are elusive to many : they cannot tell why they have 
a quiet conviction of the Tightness of things. Those who are 
able to give reasons, duly set in order, for the inner sense of 
well-balanced minds, furnish strong foundations for right and 
permanent opinions among men. One great way of gaining 
eternally right views of subjects is, after the landscape of facts 
is before the mind, to consult the innermost sense in regard to 
them, note its affirmations and negations, and then seek to find 
and to expound the reasons for the affirmations of the inner 
sense. Bring your compass to a level, mark where it points, — 
that is infallibly north, — and from that direction you can make 
true research into the whole domain of magnetic geography. 
Ask your Ruskin to give you his sense of Turner's " Slave 
Ship ; " and that sense, though opposing the first impressions of 
many, is right and defensible. 

We believe there has been, in the whole history of appointed 
chaplains, but one single attempt to oppose them on principle. 
This was at the memorable time when the clergy of New York, 
and the more than three thousand clergy of New England, sol- 
emnly memorialized the Thirty-third Congress against the repeal 
of the Missouri Compromise. "Never," says Lorenzo Johnson,^ 
"since that memorable proceeding in Congress relating to running 
the mail on the Sabbath, had there been such an uprising of the 
clergy, speaking in tones of such remonstrance, as on this occa- 
sion ; and never before did members of Congress take it upon 
themselves to say so much in the way of defining the position of a 
Christian minister as at that time." From the hostile spirit then 
excited came an attack upon government chaplajncies, which 
seemed for a time likely to be successful, but which was nobly 
met by Meacham's Report (1853), and within a few years sub- 

* Government Chaplains, p. 5. 



^^6 THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 

sided. There is something so intrinsically fit, and so certainly- 
beneficial, in chaplaincies, that such an attack will probably 
never be made again. Johnson says, writing at about that time, 
referring to those large crews of eight hundred or a thousand 
men, amongst whom he had been one, " We have seen many a 
youthful sailor, who in his waywardness had wandered from 
home, and ere long found himself shipped into the naval service. 
After long and tedious duty had sobered him down to the reflect- 
ing point, or the sudden change from easy to hard labor, as well 
as that of an unhealthy climate, had brought him upon the 'sick 
list,' — there on the high seas, or in a foreign port, on coming 
thoroughly to himself, he welcomes with true cordiality the man 
who in a quiet manner goes to his couch to speak of his mother's 
counsels, his father's advice, of Sabbath privileges perhaps neg- 
lected, and of a sin-pardoning God. How shall we calculate 
the importance, the worth, of this timely visitation of a chaplain 
charged with duties of this nature ? If the objectors to the 
employment of chaplains were to receive the last message of a 
dying son or brother from the hand of one of these ambassadors 
of Christ, — to whom such words are usually uttered, — would 
they feel any regret that the government provides for the suste- 
nance of such men, while accompanying these hundreds of sea- 
men through their perilous voyages around the world ? We 
cannot believe they would." ^ This is the one main attack on 
chaplaincies in all their history, European and American, due 
to the irritation consequent on the faithful dealing of the clergy 
in an excited hour, and that attack brief, and we believe never 
to be repeated. There is an inner, invincible sense that chap- 
laincies are right. 

This paper will seek to find and to explain the relation of 
Religion to the State Institutions. 

The relation of the State to those in her various institutions 
has been admirably described by Chaplain Speare in his earnest 
and manly report of 1876, to which we may make frequent refer- 
ence, in these words : " Constitutional immunities are for citi- 
zens : and convicts, who are only the wards of the State, cannot 

* Johnson, 25, 



THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 337 

claim them ; otherwise civil liberty would be claimed, and fol- 
lowed by a jail delivery en massed ^ 

" The wards of the State ; " that is, they are as minors or 
children, who are subject to control, and are allowed liberty only 
according to the mind of those who control them, to secure 
results which are in the purpose of those who control them. 
Those, also, who are inmates of other State institutions, are also 
wards of the State ; and even those who have of their free will 
entered such an institution as a poorhouse thereby voluntarily 
surrender their liberty to such a degree as the State conceives 
is necessary for uniformity and for the general good. 

It is plain then, without further argument, that whatever is 
fitting for the State to do towards children in her public schools 
in preparation for noble lives and good citizenship, mutatis fnu- 
tandis the State has right and duty to do for her wards in her 
institutions. 

To these institutions, therefore, applies all which has been 
said, in the preceding discussion, on the daily public reading of 
the Bible, the singing of the hymn, the offering of prayer, and 
the weekly exercises and studies in a manual of morals. Espe- 
cially in prisons and reformatory institutions is teaching of morals 
even more obligatory on the State. While instructing in the vir- 
tues in schools, there may be a question, in some individual cases, 
whether the scholar has not, perchance, received more advanced 
teaching at home. But, in case of criminals and the unruly, their 
moral training is visibly a failure : parents and churches have 
failed; and the State has duty to do what others have failed to 
do, — give the lacking culture in morals. 

So far we are on sure ground, already tried and found firm. 

But now the question comes. Why do we all, in a State cut 
aloof so decidedly and held aloof so jealously from Church and 
from personal religion, instinctively feel that the State is right 
in the provision in General Statutes which reads as follows? — 
*' The chaplain of the State Prison shall perform divine service 
in the chapel of the prison, instruct the convicts in their moral 

* Rev. S. Lewis B. Speare, Chaplain of Cliarlestown State Prison : Report for 1876. 



338 THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 

and religious duties, visit Jhe sick on suitable occasions, and 
have charge of the school and library of the prison.''* 

From this point this paper will aim to discover the true rea- 
sons and basis on which a State institution can legitimately 
have a " divine service,'^ and a chaplain, and but one chaplain. 

It will perhaps be best to clear the ground of confused ideas 
and misconceptions before we commence to build. We shall 
first, therefore, inquire 

What cannot be the reasons for the appointment of 
A chaplain and the holding of a religious service in a 
State prison. 

I. It cannot be the reason why the State appoints a 
chaplain and divine service, that any prisoner, or any 
number of prisoners, think and assert that this provis- 
ion will be for their good. The State, in making all 
provisions for prisoners, looks on matters from her own stand- 
point. She acts entirely propria motu, not by individual solici- 
tation, least of all by solicitation of the convicts or wards them- 
selves. Their wants, indeed, affect her, but not their requests 
as such. The State is affected by their condition, but is not 
constrained by their petitions. Even where there is great plausi- 
bility, or even reality, of good, she gives to her wards as much 
or as little as she thinks best, not as much as they think desira- 
ble. She constantly bears in mind her own purposes and views 
in relation to them and their welfare. A notable example is 
this. One would surely think that frequent correspondence 
with home were desirable and beneficial. But the prisoner 
does not obtain his plea beyond that meagre limit which the 
State has thought best for his good, as her ward ; for, while he 
may receive letters daily, he is limited for reasons, some of 
which are obvious on reflection, to the sending home of but one 
letter in three months. The same restrictions are put upon the 
prisoner in what would seem so salutary an allowance as visits, 
" Every convict," says an English chaplain, "is allowed to see 
his friends once in six months for twenty minutes, unless de- 
prived of the privilege by misconduct." ^ In such a matter as 

* Kingsmill, 256. • 



THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 339 

a divine service., therefore, the prisoner's representations that it 
is desired, and even his view, which may be perfectly correct, 
that it would benefit him., is not the consideration which moves 
and constrains the State to make this provision. His needs 
may affect the State, but not his mere representations, as the 
expression of his wishes or demands ; and, if she grants such a 
service, it will be, not to the extent the prisoner would like, but 
to the extent which will subserve the purposes of the State. 
2. It cannot be the reason for the appointment of a 

CHAPLAIN AND A DIVINE SERVICE IN StATE INSTITUTIONS, THAT 
ANY ORGANIZATION, SOCIAL, LITERARY, RELIGIOUS, OR POLITICAL, 
THINKS IT BEST TO HAVE SUCH A MAN THERE AS ITS AGENT, 
TO CARRY OUT ITS ENDS, AND SECURE BENEFITS WHICH IT SUP- 
POSES, AND EVEN WHICH IT CAN SHOW, WOULD FOLLOW. 

The Handel and Haydn Society cannot say, Music, as we 
conceive, would be greatly beneficial to these men : therefore, 
as those who desire the good of these men, we will put a man 
there to carry out our purposes of good. The Mount-Vernon 
Literary Club would not deem it proper, in view of the great 
benefits and pleasures of literature which they enjoy, to vote 
that one of its members should be established in the State 
prison to carry out their good intentions to awaken all men to 
literature. The Republican party could not, from the supposed 
merits of its political creed, maintain that it had a right to send 
a speaker into the prison at Charlestown who would foster their 
political ideas. Nor can the Mormon Church maintain, that, as 
their principles are the salvation of mankind, they are therefore 
entitled to appoint and station a man to represent and propound 
their doctrines there. 

The truth is, all organized societies, of whatever name or 
nature, stop their visible and corporate connection with men at 
the prison-walls. They may claim that their field is the world ; 
but their external field does not embrace the prison, which is 
emphatically, what it is sometimes called, the Staters prison. If 
any of these organizations, whether church or other, claims 
that it has a right to universal dominion, and that to it there is 
no State wall which it is bound to respect, through which it has 



340 THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 

not right by a visible messenger and agent to pass, the State 
repels such organization as a false claimant, seeking to effect a 
usurpation over the State, whether this be the Mormon or the 
Romish or the Mohammedan Church, or the literary, political, 
or musical society. They have no more right to enter the 
State's prison by an agent to reside and act therein, at their 
own option, than they have to enter a citizen's residence at 
their own will and pleasure. 

3. It cannot be the reason why the State appoints a 
chaplain and a divine service, that any organization, 
political, religious, or literary, has a considerable con- 
STITUENCY THERE. We have been considering that such organ- 
izations have no right to station men in State institutions, to 
promulgate their views and gain adherents, because they believe 
their principles salutary. We are now saying, that, even if they 
have a constituency there, that does not entitle them to appoint 
an agent there to care for the wants, supposed or real, temporal 
or spiritual, of their constituency. Suppose that such respecta- 
ble bodies as the musical, political, and literary societies which 
we have mentioned should be so unfortunate as to have each 
ten members incarcerated there : would that entitle them to es- 
tablish in the prison such an agency to look after their ten 
musical men, or their ten members of the Republican party ? 
No one would seriously assert their right to pass the prison-walls 
for that purpose, or assert the obligation of the State to permit 
them. Nor could the Mormon Church successfully claim, that, 
because it had five or fifty members there, therefore the State is 
under obligation to establish a Mormon chaplain there in her 
behalf or in their behalf. 

Especially is this true when the society is a religious society 
which claims right to have agent or minister in the institution to 
reform the erring. ' In case of the various societies mentioned, 
the State could not interpose bar to their further claim over the 
prisoner, that it was in their sphere he had failed. His delin- 
quency was in morals. They had not been inefficient in their 
education of him. He did not fail in his literary, musical, or 
political career. Therefore, since our ministrations were sue- 



THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 341 



cessful, permit us to continue them. When, on the other hand, 
a religious body claims further domain, as to its previous constit- 
uency, in matters of character., the State interposes, Precisely 
in character has his career failed. Your religious body had in 
charge the moral character of this man : you have failed to 
secure the morals of this criminal : he has, therefore., become my 
ward. I have taken in hand to teach him morality:^ I will 
call in such aid as seems to me., the State., best likely to supply 
the lack. Besides all this, the State has not, by explicit law., 
debarred other societies from entering ; but she has, by positive 
regulations, debarred any particular religious society from enter- 
ing her institutions. 

Least of all is the claim valid, that, because a religious organ- 
ization has a large constituency in prison, therefore they should 
be entitled to send an agent there to reform and care for them. 
Precisely the contrary should be the argument of the State. If 
the Mormon Church has three-fourths of the criminals in the 
State institutions, when she has but a small portion of the popu- 
lation, that should be an argument, rather, why she should iiot 
be allowed to have, and why the State should be unwilling that 
she should have, an established teacher there. The argument 
is, If you have had these men under your charge from their 
childhood, and your teachings have had no restraining power to 
prevent them from becoming criminals, the State prefers to se- 
lect a moral teacher who will make a new attempt. If, indeed, 
a church v/ere but just entering into a parish work, and had ac- 
complished in a degraded population such magnificent results 
as did Chalmers in Glasgow, it would be no discredit if the 
parish still contained so many degraded as to have a large pro- 
portion of the criminals in prison : but if, on the contrary, a 
church has had the training, not only of children, but of the 
fathers and mothers of those children, and has failed to prevent 
them from being the most criminal of all classes, such a church 
should be a little modest about insisting upon further power of 
instruction over them ; and the State, if it did not ignore churches 
altogether, — as it does., — certainly would not seek for a chaplain 
to the church which had the most criminals in her institutions. 



342 THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 

Rather it would be thought that the preference should be given 
to that church, which, taking all things into account, the num- 
bers, the locations, city or country, had been most successful in 
instilling morality, and had inflicted the least percentage of 
criminals upon the State. 

It was unfortunate, therefore, for Mr. Lucas, in Parliament, 
seeking to establish Romish chaplains in English prisons, to 
quote Dr. Wilson, Roman-Catholic Bishop of Tasmania, who 
remarks, "In the convicts transported to this island from Ire- 
land, he had found not more than ten in the hundred who were 
Protestants ; but in those who came from England, from fifteen 
to twenty were Catholics." ^ The significancy of these figures is 
this : Since three-fourths of the Irish are Catholic, three-fourths 
of the Irish people give nine-tenths of the crimes, and one- 
fourth of the people (Protestant) give only one-tenth of the 
crimes ; while in England, since " five per cent by accredited 
returns are Romanists,"^ one-twentieth of the population (Catho- 
lic) gives three-twentieths of the crimes. 

Kingsmill also informs us, that " in Ulster, the northern prov- 
ince of Ireland, although it has the poorest soil and densest 
population, but is about two-thirds Protestant, the proportion of 
criminals to the population is only one in six hundred ; whereas 
in Munster, the southern province, although the most fertile, 
but intensely Romanist, the proportion is one in two hundred 
and seventy-three."^ 

An Episcopal clergyman in Boston, with whom I was con- 
versing, said somewhat gravely, " Perhaps you do not know their 
strongest argument for the appointment of their own chaplains. 
Bishop Lynch of Toronto said, ''Most of those in the jails are my 
people.''''^ I saw a twinkle in His eye, and a smile on his face, as 
he uttered, in effect, that this was "a kind of B oyle- Roach joke.^^ 

Such statistics as those above, even were the State — which 
it is not — searching among the churches for moral teachers 
for her institutions, should not make any church bold to com- 
pete for the chaplaincy. 

4. Once more : the reason why the State institutes 

1 Kingsmill, 200, 482. 2 Ibid., 483. ^ Ibid., 481. 



THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 343 

CHAPLAINCIES AND " DIVINE SERVICE " IN PRISON IS NOT BECAUSE 
SHE UNDERTAKES THERE TO " SAVE SOULS," TO TEACH PERSONAL 
RELIGION, THE MEANS OF ACCEPTANCE WITH GOD. Whatever 

right she has to take cognizance of " spiritual Hfe," as an exer- 
cise averred to be experienced by her citizens, or "salvation " 
as a private possession belonging to them, and whatever right 
she has to satisfy general cravings which are credibly repre- 
sented to her of an invisible soul or spirit, she does not, as the 
natural man, know, nor will she, remaining in her due sphere, 
undertake to formulate, dogma, and present it to men through a 
chaplain. The State does not, once and exceptionally, become, 
in her institutions, the Church, to promulgate doctrines and in- 
stitute worship. So far as the service is " divine," the direct 
worship of each spirit with God, the State merely furnishes one 
general channel in which certain feelings, unknown to her ken, 
yet not unuseful in their observed effects, can find an exercise 
satisfying and gratifying to her wards, and by them said to be 
important in securing some good which they claim will be im- 
mortal. There are, as we shall see, other uses to this service. 
We are here simply observing the relation of the State to it as 
a " divine " service of personal worship, — that it undertakes to 
make 07ie general channel for the exercise of religious feeling so far 
as it is common to all. So far, because so far it may be benefi- 
cial ; no further, because she cannot do so without such discord and 
friction in her institutions., and in regard to them., as will defeat or 
mar many of her cherished purposes in regard to her wards. 

The State, then, does not, proprio motii, co7nmand " divine 
service" in her institutions, — so far, that is, as it is divine., the 
exercise of personal religion; she permits ; and commands^ to 
give shape and effect to her permission. 

If, now, the ground is quite clear from all misconceptions 
that the State appoints its chaplains as having a right to teach 
religion, or because individuals within claim that it w^ould be for 
their good, or because organizations claim a right to extend 
their benevolent operations to inmates of her institutions, or 
because they have a large constituency there, which have gone 
there notwithstanding their care, we are prepared to inquire, 
positively, — 



344 ^^-^ STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 



What must be the reasons for the appointment of a 
chaplain and the holding of a religious service in the 

PRISON ? 

Since the State views all things from her own standpoint, the 
general statement is that her reason for a chaplaincy and a 
divine service is, because she deems it for the State'' s interest ., and 
in her view, for the good of the inmates, regarded as her wards ; 
and in her view, also, an allowable liberty granted and made effec- 
tive to them as desiring it for their satisfaction and gratification. 

The State, regarding the efforts of philanthropists and reli- 
gious preachers in connection with prisons, studies their effects. 
The names and labors of Howard, Elizabeth Fry, Sarah Mar- 
tin, Whitefield, Wesley, are known to her. The thought of a 
permanent ministry of this sort is suggested to her. Always 
viewing matters from her own standpoint, let us see what the 
State observes, which is inducement to establish chaplaincies 
and " divine service." 

THE DIVINE SERVICE. 

I. The State observes the effect upon men of gather- 
ing THEM statedly ONCE A WEEK, in duc ordcr and repose and 
cleanliness, on a rest day, when they are free from labor. 'Tis 
a genial and useful exhilaration. In rural New England 
the church became " the meeting-house.''' Ik Marvel, in his 
" Dream Life," brings up a pleasant picture of " the country 
church." " After the morning service they have an hour's ' in- 
termission,' as the preacher calls it, during which the old men 
gather on the sunny side of the building ; and after shaking 
hands all around, and asking after the folks at home, they en- 
joy a quiet talk about the crops." The prison-chapel, indeed, 
affords no such free opportunities for prolonged social chat and 
friendly intercourse ; but it is an influence which the State may 
fairly take account of, that the prisoner on that day shall meet 
with all his fellows and superiors. It is even possible that five 
or ten minutes might be allowed for social intercourse after a 
" divine service." It is something to have seen human faces. 
This " holy convocatioit " is felt to have its uses. 



THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 345 

"Their meeting in chapel," says Clay,^ chaplain of Preston 
Gaol,^ "is a privilege, and I know it is highly esteemed." 
"As a congregation, the behavior of the prisoners is not only 
decorous, but exemplary." " It is a proof, that, when gathered 
together to worship God, they may be freed from almost all 
restraint but that of their reverence for him." ^ " The chr.pel 
brings the acceptable hour, the welcome and interesting occu- 
pation, which relieves the severe monotony of the prisoner's 
daily life." 4 

2. The State can take account of the power of 
THOUGHTS APPROPRIATE TO THE Sabbath in Connection with 
divine service on the day of rest It is true indeed, unfortu- 
nately, that a large proportion of criminals have been regardless 
of the Sabbath. The chaplain of Clerkenwell said, that, out of 
a hundred thousand inmates, " the usual process has been im- 
patience of parental restraint, violation of the Sabbath, and the 
neglect of religious ordinances. I do not recollect a single 
case of capital offence where the party has not been a Sabbath- 
breaker. Indeed, I may say, in reference to prisoners of all 
classes, that in nineteen cases out of twenty they are persons 
who have not only neglected the Sabbath, but all religious or- 
dinances." ® 

Yet these same men are not insensible to the idea of the 
Sabbath ; of one day set apart as holy time ; of what it means j 
of the truths usually taught on that day j of the bells which they 
hear chiming, or calling to each other from the church-towers. 
A chaplain can make this idea alone very effective upon a pris- 
oner for good. 

If Sabbath-keeping is intimately connected with all virtues, 
we can even, without difficulty, conceive of the valuable effect of 
the enforced Sabbath-keeping during two or three years as pro- 



1 The Prison Chaplain: Memoir of Rev. John Clay, B.D., Chaplain of Preston Gaol. 
By his Son, Rev. Walter Lowe Clay. With Portrait. London, 1861, pp. 621. 

2 "Gaol (pronounced jal.) : Lat. gayola, gabiola, as if from caveola, diminutive of cavea, 
cavity, cage. Hence, It., gabbiuola ; Sp., gayola, jaula ; Pg., gaiola; N. French, geole ; 
Norm. Fr., geaule, geole ; O. Fr., gaole, gaiole, jaiole." "Written also, and preferably, jail," 
says Webster. 

3 Clay, 276. * Ibid., 280. s Kingsmill, 53. 



346 THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 

ducing a habit which shall follow the man in his after-life, of 
desisting from labor, and going where good tidings are spoken 
on that day. 

" I wish the chapel service — and especially that of the Sab- 
bath — to be so consolatory, so agreeable, so necessary to the 
prisoners, that participation in divine worship, begun under 
compulsion, may be continued ever after from choice and affec- 
tion. I would, therefore, have the chapel present, as far as 
practicable, — even in the minutest particulars, — the appearance 
of a well-ordered church, so that some who enter it may be 
beneficially reminded of the Sundays of a more innocent and 
happier time ; and that many may be so trained, during impris- 
onment, to the observance of Sabbath duties, that they may 
resort, when at liberty, to their own house of prayer, with hearts 
still grateful for the comfort received in a similar place, and at a 
time when almost every thing else spoke sorrow and disgrace."^ 
" It is not in my power to express all that I feel and think on 
the subject of prison-chapel service. That it ought, as far as 
possible, to be instrumental in creating reverence and love for 
the Lord's Day and for divine worship in those who so much 
need every incentive to true religion, all nourishment in good- 
ness, no one will venture to dispute. It is well worth consider- 
ing, by every one who feels an interest in the treatment of our 
criminals, that one hundred thousand offenders are discharged 
from our prisons every year ; and that it cannot but be of the 
highest moment to themselves, to their families, and to the com- 
munity, that they should return into the world with a grateful 
and abiding remembrance of Sabbath rest and instruction." ^ 

3. The State can take account of this day, and a 
service on this day, as a remembrancer of home and the 
FAMILY. Though the prisoner was no church-goer in his late 
years, yet in his childhood he used to go with his father and 
mother, brothers and sisters. " He walked to the house of God 
in company, with the multitude that kept holy day." He is now 
separated by his crimes from that home. " If I had followed 
your advice," is written by many a criminal to his parents, " I 

* Clay, 280, 281 ; Report of 1847. ^ Clay, 337 : Report of 1854. 



THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 347 

should not have been here." Probably, in the free world at large,^ 
there are more thoughts of home and loved ones and the de« 
parted on the Sabbath than on all the hurrying six days of care 
and labor. As a device to make home memories potent and 
salutary, nothing could be more effective than a Sabbath reli- 
gious service. Says Kingsmill, chaplain of Pentonville Prison, 
London, " The last thing forgotten, in all the recklessness of dis- 
solute profligacy, is the prayer and hymn taught by the mother's 
lips, or uttered at a father's knee j and the most poignant sting 
of conscience, in solitude and adversity, is that which the recol- 
lection of filial disobedience and ingratitude inflicts." ^ 

"There is a well-authenticated story," says George Macdon- 
ald, " of a convict's having been greatly reformed for a time by 
going, in one of the English colonies, into a church where the 
matting along the aisle was of the same pattern as that in the 
church to which he had gone, when a boy, with his mother." ^ 

When the call comes to the " chapel," how potent the chap- 
lain can make the thought, in his prayer or sermon, that the 
families to which those belong who are gathered there are going 
to the house of God at this very hour, and perhaps are speaking 
of their absent prodigal child! Nothing, one would say, except 
the home letters, could so keep alive and effective the tender 
and hallowed memories of home. 

4. The State can observe the softening, refining in- 
fluences OF A religious SERVICE. "' David took a harp, and 
played with his hand : so Saul was refreshed and was well, and 
the evil spirit departed from him." The organ-peal, the three 
or four hymns, the prayer of the good man, the presence of the 
interested stranger, the stories and kindly thoughts of the ser- 
mon, the cheering words of the Scriptures, — all these are calcu- 
lated to win the heart from its solitary, despairing, brutal, selfish 
mood, and humanize and affect it, not only for a moment, but 
for all time. They melt the wax for the stamp ; they break up 
matted turf, and soften the soil for the seed. 

1 Joseph Kingsmill, Chaplain of Pentonville Prison, London : Chapters on Prisons and 
Prisoners, London, 1854, pp. 508. — P. 40. 

2 Robert Faiconer, 489. 



348 THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 

5. The State can observe, as prompi'ing her to insti- 
tute A DIVINE SERVICE, THAT THE SERMONS OR DISCOURSES OR 
?TALKS CONTAIN A VAST AMOUNT OF USEFUL MORAL INSTRUC- 
TION. From the instructions of a faithful chaplain, in a series 
of years, one might almost prepare a book of lessons and illus- 
trations and appeals on the duties. " The next day being Sun- 
day, Mr. Eden preached two sermons that many will remember 
all their lives. The first was against theft and all the shades 
oi dichonestyy "In the afternoon, Mr. Eden preached against 
cruelty y ^ 

6. The State can take note, as reason for a divine ser- 
vice, THAT THE MAIN VIEW BEFORE THE PREACHER IS EFFICA- 
CIOUS FOR GOOD ON THE PRISONER, NAMELY, THE VIEW OF 

God as King and Judge ; as just, yet merciful ; as one to whom 
men are responsible ; one who, for proper reasons, will pardon 
offenders. 

First, all these subjects are analogous to those which have 
reference to the State's relation to the prisoner. Law, govern- 
ment, responsibility, punishment, reward, pardon, ill-desert, good- 
desert, — these are ideas which are constantly in the preacher's 
mouth ; and there is an analogy by which the mind naturally 
refers what the preacher says to the State, as a governmental 
power ordained of God, as well as to the divine government. 

ThcJt, agazji, the State can take note that the impression made 
of the solemnity of responsibility to divine government will be 
radical and generic, and that one specific form of that responsi- 
bility will be responsibility to God in the State and in the social 
order. 

7. The State can observe the intention of a " divine 
service " to make a new man, a restored humanity. it 
is quite within her ken to see that, externally, the convict is 
fallen from the state of rectitude, and is in many respects a ruin. 
Whether there be a future world, whether there be a spiritual 
life, she knows not, as a State ; but she can see before her 
humanity i?i ruins. She is competent, in her sphere, to have a 
service which shall say. Manhood, — '"''a new creature.''^ Rev. 

^ Charles Reade : Never Too Late to Mend, chap. xv. 



THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION 349 

C. C. Foote, chaplain of the Detroit House of Correction, read 
at the National Congress, 1870, a paper, "The Importance and 
Power of Religious Forces in Prisons." He exclaims, " Tow- 
ering above all else, and inclusive of all else, he should know 
but that one comprehensive condition, — hu77ianity in ruins to be 
saved." "Like the Good Shepherd, the chaplain's mission is to 
find and restore the lost." 

8. The State is competent, within her sphere, to ob- 
serve THE EFFECT OF THE PREACHING OF CERTAIN STRANGE, 
GRAND DOCTRINES, WHICH EXCITE IN A MARVELLOUS MANNER 
THE DEEPEST EMOTIONS OF HER WARDS. It is not for her tO 

inquire into their truth. She notes only their melting, exhilarat- 
ing, forming, and transforming power as motives. So far as the 
State is concerned, this " old, old story " might as well be the 
history of Washington's boyhood, or the story of Arnold Wink- 
elried ; so far as the State is concerned, it may be truth, or 
it may be fanaticism : but she sees the marvellous transforming 
effects of this story of the cross. True or false, it affects men. 

The Man of Calvary was right : " I, if I be lifted up, will draw 
all men unto me." " By this sign conquer " is still written on 
the heavens, as before Constantine's eyes. Shelley was esteemed 
no Christian j but he wrote the beautiful lines, — 

" The moon of Mahomet 
Arose, and it shall set ; 
While, blazoned as on heaven's immortal noon, 
The cross leads generations on.''^ 

De Quincey, looking back in fond and pensive reminiscence 
into his childhood, 

" Pictured in memory's mellowing glass," 

recalls to us, " It had happened, that amongst our vast nursery 
collection of books was the Bible, illustrated with many pictures ; 
and in long, dark evenings, as my three sisters and myself sat 
by firelight round the guard (fender) of our nursery, no book 
was so much in request amongst us. It ruled us and swayed us 
as mysteriously as music." "Above all, the story of a just 

^ Hellas, Chorus. 



350 THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 

man, — man, and yet ?/(?/ man, — real above all things, and yet 
shadowy above all things, who had suffered the passion of death 
in Palestine, slept upon our minds like early dawn upon the 
waters."^ 

" The Cross in the Cell " is the true story of the power of 
the " Lamb of God " to " take away the sins of the world." ^ 

" Still thy love, O Christ arisen ! 
Yearns to reach these souls in prison : 
Through all depths of sin and loss 
Drops the plummet of thy cross : 
Never yet abyss was found 
Deeper than thy cross can sound." 

This moves men. Speaking of John Clay, chaplain for forty 
years, " one, whose frequent attendance in the chapel of Preston 
Gaol had qualified him for forming an opinion not quite worth- 
less, delivers himself thus : ' Novv^ and then you have a chance 
of preaching God's gospel to men in prison chapels and such 
places. Did you ever see it done, and mark how it was done 
successfully? The preacher may speak of heaven; but -those 
men cannot understand him. Spiritual pleasure is a thing utterly 
beyond their comprehension. They know of no happiness except 
gross, foul, animal indulgence. The preacher may speak of 
hell, and they will wince. But is it true 1 They harden them- 
selves, and won't beUeve it. But now let him preach Christ cru- 
cified, and mark the effects of his preaching, as, in vivid, strong 
words, he tells the story of that life and death, — the story of that 
Friday morning. As he speaks thus, and tells the tale in living 
language, watch those men's faces, — faces stupefied, marred, 
brutalized by years of selfishness and lust and gross ignorance. 
Here and there you will see one on which the look of sullen 
defiance and stolid stupidity is beginning to change. It 
changes and softens : a gleam of intelligence and better feeling 
passes athwart their features. That strange, novel idea of God 
having actually suffered to save them from suffering astounds 
and bewilders them. Unwonted feelings and thoughts begin to 

1 Autobiographic Sketches, 13. 

2 N. Adams, D.D. : The Cross in the Cell ; Conversations with a Prisoner awaiting 
Execution. 



THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION, 351 

Stir in their hearts. Vaguely and dimly they begin to feel that 
they ought, they must, they will, love this Jesus, who has so 
loved them. They feel that they should like to do, to suffer, 
something to prove their love. The old self-love is shaken ; the 
new life from God is stirring within them ; and, when those men 
go back to their cells, they will kneel down, and, in their half- 
dumb, inarticulate fashion, they will gasp out a prayer. 

" ' I speak that I do know ; I testify that which I have 
seen.'"i 

And the State can take account of such testimony as to exter- 
nal results following from the strange and solemn enchantment 
upon men of the story of the Crucified One, and she may suf- 
fer and use that enchantment in a religious service. 

Passing now to a sphere where the State may not observe, but 
may gain rational evidence, — 

9. The State can take account of a certain something 

WHICH IS represented TO HER, CALLED " PERSONAL RELIGION ;" 
OF CERTAIN GREAT BENEFITS WHICH THE WARDS ALLEGE THEY 

WOULD RECEIVE, — benefits \^hich go under different names, — 
"salvation," a "hope of glory," "the immortal good," "eternal 
life." To the State, which is only the natural man^ all this is of 
the nature of invisible riches^ ^''mansions in the skies ;^^ but she 
can receive testimony which is credible about it, that it is some- 
thing which the prisoner considers unspeakably precious. Now, 
were the prisoners their "own men," — free in society, — the 
State would have no more to do with their religion, even if 
asked, than to furnish them with milk or honey. Moreover, 
were this somewhat of an injurious tendency, usually producing 
madness or other evil results, or interfering with prison disci- 
pline, the State would be under no obligation to gratify this 
craving. 

But as this somewhat^ this "salvation," this ^^ religion,^^ this 
" hope of glory," is accompanied, so far as she can observe, 
with fruits of good ; as it is connected with the preacher of right- 
eousness, with that best book about God, as all her statesmen 
call it, — she feels not only at liberty to allow this divine service, 

^ Clay's Memoir, 202, 203. 



352 THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 

SO called, but also a kind of obligation to prepare and command 
one general channel for its exercise. 

Be it observed^ the chaplain and the religions do not take this 
cool view of religion. They view it from within ; the State, from 
without. They view it as, to them, the great reality of existence ; 
the State, as a gratification and satisfaction to her wards. While 
the State, therefore, with cool calculation, appoints divine ser- 
vice, she does not, therefore, mean that that service shall be a 
cold one. From the religious side, it must be fervent to be 
anything. The State might as coolly allow music in an Inde- 
pendence celebration ; but your Zerrahn and your Tourjee must 
not, therefore, furnish lifeless music. 

Moreover, it must be observed, that, in the chapel, the Bible 
takes on a different use from that which it has in the public 
schools. There it is the prescribed book about God for general 
devotion : in the chapel it is the book by law permitted to be 
used as the general book of personal religion. 

For all the preceding reasons, so briefly stated, the State 
still maintaining strict separation from church and personal re- 
ligion, the State appoints " a divine service." 

THE CHAPLAIN. 

The next point is the appointment of a minister for the 
chapel, — a chaplain. 

I. The State, having observed the value of a divine 

SERVICE, observes ALSO THE NECESSITY OF HAVING A PERSON 

TO CONDUCT IT. Every reason leads to the appointment of one 
person permanently to do this. 

The history of prison services shows, that, without appoint- 
ment, only the most earnest and philanthropic preachers have 
sought to minister the gospel in the prison. " In the life of 
Bernard Gilpin, in Queen Elizabeth's time, the author (speaking 
of his labors) informs us, that, wherever he came, he used to visit 
all the gaols and places of confinement, few in the kingdom 
having at that time any appointed minister ; and, by his affec- 
tionate address, he is said to have reformed many very aban- 
doned persons in those places." "In 1700," writes Clay, 



THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 353 

"chaplains and chaplaincies were seldom part of the prison 
establishment. Some loose parson of insolvent tendencies 
was commonly hired at a cheap rate for the office of ordinary." 
"The act for appointing chaplains to gaols was passed just 
before the commencement of Howard's labors."^ 

On the other hand, there is liability of the exclusion of good 
men who desire to minister in prison " In accordance with the 
traditions of English piety," Clay tells us, "when the 'Godly 
Club ' was first formed at Oxford, the Wesleys and other members 
offered their first ministrations to the prisoners in the castle. 
The good work, once begun, was not lightly abandoned. For 
some years, Whitefield, Wesley, and their most zealous followers, 
prayed, preached, and distributed alms in all the gaols, bride- 
wells, and bedlams that came within their circuits ; and it was 
only under compulsion that they at length forsook this portion 
-of their mission. When the storm of unpopularity was at its 
height, they found the doors even of prisons and madhouses 
shut against them. ' So,' said John Wesley, ' we are forbid to 
go to Newgate for fear of making them wicked, and to Bedlam 
for fear of making them mad ; ' and, from that time, he and his 
brother Charles discontinued their prison visitations." But 
Sarah Peters continued.^ 

It is manifestly unwise to leave the religious service to chance- 
comers. Latimer, in a sermon preached before Edward VI., 
exclaimed, " I would there were curates of prisons, that Vv^e 
might say, ' The curate of Newgate,' ' The curate of the Fleet;' 
and I would have them waged for their labor. It is holiday 
work to visit the prisoners ; for they be kept from sermons." ^ 

In 1826, according to the Report of the Boston Prison Disci- 
pline Society, "there was not a resident chaplain in any State 
prison in the United States; and the religious instruction 
imparted was, for the most part, reduced down to the merest 
modicum." ^ 

John Howard, in his first report on prisons, 1777, writes, "A 
chaplain is necessary in a gaol. I had the pleasure to find a 

^ Clay, loi. 2 Clay, 35. 3 Clay's Memoir, 24. 

* Report on Prisons and Reformatories in the United States and Canada : E. C. Wines, 
D.D., and Theod. W. Dwight, LL.D. 1867. — Sect. 6, Mor. and Relig. Agencies, 184-220. 



354 THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 

chaplain appointed to most of the county gaols, in consequence 
of the act made the 13th of his present Majesty. When their 
office is vacant, it behooves magistrates not to take the first cler- 
gyman who offers his services, without regarding his real char- 
acter. They should choose one who is in principle a Christian ; 
who will not content himself with officiating in public, but will 
converse with the prisoners, admonish the profligate, exhort the 
thoughtless, comfort the sick, and make known to the con- 
demned that 7ne7'cy which is revealed in the gospel.'''' ^ 

The same reasons which make a pastor fnore efficient thaji a 
transient preacher cipply as well to a prison chapel as to a local 
church. The chaplain is the prisoners'' pastor. 

2. The State discerns the benefit of having within her 
INSTITUTIONS ONE WHO REPRESENTS GOODNESS. What is Con- 
gregated in prisons is badness of all sorts. The State chooses a 
man pre-eminent in living goodness, and sends him, like a pure 
and vital flood of sunbeams, into the darknes. Go in and out 
before them, and encourage virtue and repress vice. It was 
said of a certain minister, by a sea-captain not professedly 
religious, '' He does more good by walking the streets than 
most men do by preaching." 

My chaplain friend of the flagship said to me, " The wicked- 
est officer I have known said, as I chanced to hear him, — and he 
commenced and ended with a round oath, — ' We must have a 
chaplain to keep down the fearful demoralization on board ship.' 
A Christian officer, on the other hand, advocated the chaplaincy 
from expediency, because it diminished greatly the number of 
punishments among the men." 

The chaplain represents goodness in its stern purity, in its 
gentle benignity. It does not detract from the force of this 
consideration to remember, that, from 1844-54, " nearly a million 
and a half passed through the prisons of the United Kingdom, 
and 90,000 annually enter our prisons for the first time."^ 

3 The State observes that it is useful to have one in 

THE prison who REPRESENTS AND EMBODIES THE IDEA OF PHI- 
LANTHROPY AND THE BENEVOLENT THOUGHTS OF THE OUTSIDE 

^ Prisons in England and Wales, 28. ^ Clay, 338, 395. 



THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 355 

WORLD. The government of the prison may be mild in firm- 
ness j yet it represents, as it ought, law and authority. The chap- 
laincy represents benevolence, — the unspoken benevolence of 
thousands who wish well to the unhappy and criminal. Some- 
times the world expresses its kindness in ways which affect pris- 
oners' hearts deeply. In the Portland Prison are a Bible and 
a Prayer-Book, the gift of Prince Albert, who was himself 
present at the prison dedication in 1849, in which are these 
cheering words : " Presented to the chapel of the convicts at 
Portland as token of interest, and in hope of their amendment. 
Albert." ^ 

Of that outside interest in the prisoner, expressing itself occa- 
sionally in one form or other, the chaplain's presence is a con- 
stant living remembrance and exponent. He is felt to sustain 
a relation to them of good-will, rather than an official relation. 

4. The State can see that it is well that there should 
be one who, freed as much as possible from official ties, 
will be, and will be considered, their personal friend. 
Noble portraiture and picture is that where a chaplain, — who, 
I sometimes imagine, was sketched from Frederick W. Rob- 
ertson, sometimes I imagine from Newman Hall, — a man of 
culture, taste, choiceness, fitted to move in any society and to 
adorn it, crouching, at half an hour after midnight, outside the 
iron door of the subterranean cell, where was confined a crim- 
inal who had spurned what this visitant had already done for 
him, and, filled with madness and despair, was meditating self- 
destruction, — Francis Eden, crouching after midnight outside 
his cell, tapping on the iron door, and uttering, in the silence 
and darkness, the amazing word, " Brother ! " ^ 

" The first thing," John Clay used to remark, " for a chaplain 
to aim at, is to make his poor fellows believe that he is their 
friend ; that he simply wants to do them good. All his preach- 
ing and teaching will, otherwise, go for very little." "There is 
abundant evidence of the success of his plan. ' The prisoners 
generally listened to him ' was the account given by an infidel 
socialist, who had himself been in the gaol for a Chartist irregu- 

^ Kingsmill, i8o. ^ Charles Reade : Never Too Late to Mend, chap, xv. 



356 THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND REIIGION. 

larity; 'but they wouldn't have minded any thing that he either 
read or said to them, if they hadn't thought he was willing to 
befriend them. When they were abusing the parsons, they com- 
monly made an exception in his favor.'" ^ When, in 1850, the 
chapel was repaired, he got th^ prisoners to paint the panels in 
the roof blue, spangled with yellow stars, and to inscribe various 
devices ; and he made the chapel a gift of his own handiwork, — 
a large altar-piece representing the Crucifixion, on which he had 
spent his leisure for some months.^ 

A prisoner in the terrible hulks at the Bermudas wrote, " Dr. 
King was more than a father to all who came under him." 
Of Mr. Kingston, chaplain at Gibraltar, one writes, " Now I 
don't think but that any of the prisoners would have gone 
through fire if he had wished." " So it is," writes John Clay, — 
for this is from his report for 185 1, — " what these poor creatures 
chiefly need, in order to restore in them the image of humanity, 
is consideration and sympathy. It is not the mere chaplain, but 
the earnest and pitying Christian, who, while armed with author- 
ity to repress all tendencies to evil, can at the same time touch 
the chord in the convict's heart, which is still capable of vibrat- 
ing in harmony with what is good."^ " In my own experience, 
I believe myself to have been successful in proportion as I have 
been able to persuade the prisoner that his temporal and reli- 
gious good was our earnest desire and prayer, — the great end 
aimed at by our discipline. I conceive that Capt. Maconochie's 
remarkable success among the outcasts of Norfolk Island was 
chiefly owing to their conviction of his deep interest in their 
amendment." 

The story of Capt. Maconochie is among the most inspiring 
in the history of convicts. Capt. Alexander Maconochie had a 
plan called the "mark system," which commended itself; and, 
in 1840, this convict island was given into his charge. He ob- 
jected against such a place for a fair experiment ; " but ' fiat 
experimentum in corpore vili ' was the only answer he could obtain 
from the government." In 1834 a mutiny had been quelled ; 
twenty-nine ringleaders sentenced. Thirteen were called to be 

^ Clay's Memoir, ii8. ^ Ibid., 204. ^ ibid., 314. 



THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 357 

hanged : the other sixteen were reprieved. The reprieved re- 
mained sadly mute ; the ones allotted to the gallows fell on 
their knees, one by one, and thanked God. It was a mercy, 
they thought, to escape from the tyranny. " When Capt. Macon- 
ochie took command, there were two thousand convicts on the 
island, — one part, the worst felonry of England ; the rest, the re- 
convict villains of New South Wales and Tasmania, — the dregs 
of criminality. For trifling offences they were flogged, ironed, 
or locked up in a dark den for a term of days." " In all this, 
Capt. Maconochie wrought a speedy change. He threw himself 
heart and soul into the work of regenerating these degraded 
brutes. He built churches, established schools, imported a 
catechist, and, on Sunday, toiled as ministering deacon himself. 
Day after day his brain was incessantly busy, elaborating new 
expedients with which to raise his fallen charge out of bestial lust 
and demoniacal malignity into self-respect, loyalty, and human 
affection. And his success was great." " Capt. Maconochie was 
four years in Norfolk Island. ' I found it,' he says, ^ a turbulent, 
brutal hell; and I left it a well-ordered community.' " Studious 
of allurements to tempt to effort for self-restoration, he incurred 
odium at Australia because he gave the convicts the Queen's 
birthday as a holiday ; allowed tea, coffee, and tobacco ; and 
wanted seraphines in the churches. " You must remember," 
was his own defence of the indulgences he permitted, "that I 
was dragging up two thousand of my fellow-men almost by the 
hair of the head from perdition."^ 

5. The State can see the benefit of having one person 

IN THE INSTITUTION WHO SHALL REPRESENT HOPE. The offi- 
cers of a prison, as kind as the chaplain, nevertheless represent 
law in its strictness. Contact with wily convicts has put officers 
on their guard. They wear the watchful look on their faces. 
Underneath they may have the kindest hearts. We do not mean 
to imply that officers are really hopeless of prisoners : on the 
contrary, Gideon Haynes says,^ " I have no doubt that at least 

1 Clay's Memoir, 251 ; Maconochie, Norfolk Island (1849), of which six pages are given 
in Carpenter's Our Convicts. There is, I find, a copy in Boston Public Library. 

2 Pictures from Prison Life, 264. ' 



358 THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION 

eighty per cent of all convicted of crime may be reclaimed, and 
made useful members of society, by proper discipline." Gen. 
Samuel E. Chamberlain, the present warden at Charlestown, 
wrote recently in the same hopeful tone : " A happy combination 
of useful trades — religious, moral, and educational teachings — 
would, I believe, produce wonderful results on the future of our 
criminals." ^ 

A chaplain, on the other hand, may " be wise as a serpent ; " 
but his whole religious experience, the transactions between his 
soul and God, have given him boundless ideas of God's mercy 
to the repentant. He is accustomed to think of the thief on the 
cross. To John Newton some one observed, " If God can con- 
vert such a one, he can convert anybody." "I never doubted 
that," was the reply, "since he converted me." 'Tis the chap- 
lain who remembers that " He layeth the beams of His chambers 
in the waters P Says John Clay's biographer, " To the charge 
of being sanguine he would angrily plead guilty. ' Sanguine ! ' 
was the usual reply; 'why, of course, I am sanguine; I should 
have no business to be the chaplain of a gaol if I wasn't san- 
guine : and I am sure of this, that a firm, obstinate, enthusiastic 
belief in the possibility of saving even the worst of the poor 
fellows committed to his charge, is a prison chaplain's most 
necessary qualification. I wonder what some of the knowing 
gentlemen who criticise my simplicity would make of it, if they 
had to minister in this place. It would be barren work, I think, 
going from cell to cell to let the prisoner know how acute and 
wide-awake you were yourself, and what hypocritical scoundrels 
you thought them. It is hard enough, I can tell you, working 
in such a place, hoping against hope ; and our gratitude, there- 
fore, is not very profound to the kind monitors who think us a 
pack of fools for our pains." ^ 

This was written, not by a sentimentalist, but by one who was 
chaplain nearly forty years ; who is described as " a man con- 
fessedly practical and sagacious, and gifted with a keen insight 
into human nature, with the experience of a lifetime." He 
writes again, " When religious teachers were called to minister 

1 Report, 1876. 2 Clay's Memoir, 231, 232. 



THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 359 

in gaols, the proceeding at once admitted the duty of society to 
attempt the recovery of its outcasts, and implied a hope that 
such attempts might be sometimes successful." ^ " Having seen 
what our system was for more than twenty years, I am as much 
astonished at, as I am deeply grateful for, the results accom- 
plished in a few 3^ears of more wholesome rule, — results which 
show that the work has not been unblessed by Him who ' is not 
willing that any should perish^ but that all should come to repent- 
aiice.'' " ^ " If a clergyman," he would sometimes say, " is willing 
to put all ambition and hope of advancement on one side, and 
make the salvation of souls the great end and aim of his min- 
istry, he could choose no field for work so fruitful as a prison."^ 

The very presence of a chaplain in a prison says Hope ! The 
longer one muses on the chaplain, in thought of whom he repre- 
sents^ the more his presence says Hope ! 

The chaplain, as the messenger of hope, finds beautiful em- 
blem in the Angel of the Lord who came to the Galilean fisher- 
man in prison, in night's darkness, sleeping between two 
soldiers, bound with two chains, under doom of certain death on 
the morrow. Fair and exhilarating picture, worthy to be set on 
the chapel-wall, — the Angel appearing; a "light shining in the 
prison ; " the prisoner awakened ; " Arise up quickly ; " the chains 
falling off ; '' Gird thyself, and bind on thy sandals ; " " Cast thy 
garment about thee, and follow me ; " the celestial Conductor 
leading him past the first and second ward, through the iron 
gate, opening to them of its own accord, into the city ; and the 
amazed yet thankful Peter, "Now know I that the Lord hath 
sent his Angel, and hath delivered me." 

That " light shines in a prison," that hope, present and eter- 
nal, when the gospel enters, in the person of a consecrated 
chaplain. 

6. The State can observe the benefit of having one who, 

WHILE honoring OFFICERS, AND STRICTLY OBSERVING HIS OWN 
SPHERE, WILL BE, IN THINGS CONCERNING THE PRISONERS, THE 
REPRESENTATIVE OF HUMANITY. To a judicioUS CXtCnt, whcu 

necessary, the chaplain should strive to mitigate the severities 

^ Clay's Memoir, 288; Circular Letter, 1849. ^ Ibid., 287. ^ Ibid., 231. 



360 THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION, 

of discipline ; and time was when it was necessary for him to 
protest against cruelties which were inflicted by thoughtless and 
brutal officers. 

On the other hand, he has a work to do, at proper times, to 
arouse the public interest in those under his charge. This was 
done by Howard. To make us " remember those who are in 
bonds as bound with them " is one of his duties. Clay's 
Memoir says of him, " His Reports helped, in no slight degree, to 
force the special question of prison-discipline and the general 
question of the cure of crime upon public notice." ^ 

" I consider that a gaol chaplain's opportunities for research 
into these things, sad and disheartening as the case may be, 
should not be neglected, nor the result of his investigations be 
suppressed. I believe it to be a momentous necessity, that the 
public, especially the Christian public, should be kept fully in- 
formed of the progress made by the malign powers leagued 
against the happiness and character of the industrious classes, 
and of the condition of millions in the country whom I have, on 
former occasions, spoken of as our home heathefisy ^ 

" I have felt it my duty to publish what you call ' Annual 
Warnings ' of the state of debasement of our gaol inmates. 
Longer imprisonment and harder labor would be repaid by the 
gratifying consciousness that our wisest legislators have occa- 
sionally found matter in my Reports which has conduced to the 
progress of prison-discipline and popular education."^ 

These " Reports " began in 1824. "The first scarcely filled 
one column of a newspaper : the last was a thick octavo pam- 
phlet." " Latterly he aimed at helping on the amendment of 
prison-discipline and the repression of crime throughout the 
kingdom. At the time the earliest were written, the general 
ignorance and unconcern about prisons and criminals were little 
short of profound."* "He set himself to study, through the 
prisons, the habits, characters, wants, temptations, and vices of 
the masses from which they were drawn." " It was from the 
constant watching of the stream of criminality which flowed 
through the prison that he drew his main conclusions. The 

1 Clay's Memoir, 125. 2 ibid., 519, 520. 2 Ibid., 560. * Ibid., 124. 



THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 36 1 

prison, in fact, was his crime-gauge, by means of which, after 
endless observations year after year, taken and registered, he 
gradually detected curious phenomena about the fluctuations 
of crime generally, the waxing and waning of particular species, 
the effect of good and bad times, the power of various trades 
to foster vicious propensities, the results of legislation," &c. 
" His gaol studies were, of course, supplemented in various 
ways. He systematically read right through both the extinct 
and the current literature of crime." " Every book or report 
connected with prison-management that was published in Eng- 
land he carefully studied." " By degrees he established special 
correspondents all over the country." ^ " ' I wish,' was his con- 
stant remark, ' that I could persuade people to notice and be- 
lieve and think about these things : it is my business, therefore, 
to make my language not only lucid, but pellucid, so that peo- 
ple may understand it at once.' To this end, the text was pro- 
fusely illustrated with ' maps showing the localities of crime,' 
* diagrams to explain the effects of drunkenness,'" &c. "It is 
not easy to estimate the effects which he produced by these 
reports and otherwise ; but that he exercised a very appreciable 
influence in stirring up the present crusade against crime is be- 
yond denial. He was, undoubtedly, one of the first who fath- 
omed and understood, in any adequate degree, the nature of 
crime in England. The compliment repeatedly paid to him in 
Parliament, that 'he knew more of the working-classes than 
any other man living,' was probably hardly an exaggeration." ^ 

"In 1838 the Central Society on Education circulated an 
epitome of his educational investigations. During the great 
debates on education in 1839, Lord John Russell quoted the 
descrijDtion he had given the year before of the ignorance of 
prisoners. From this time, when education, prison-discipline, 
or any subject connected with crime, was under discussion, in 
Parliament or elsewhere, he was almost invariably quoted as a 
noteworthy authority." ^ 

" You have kept me awake half the night^^'' wrote Lord 
Brougham to Clay, in acknowledgment of one of his chaplain 
Reports. 

1 Clay's Memoir, 128, 129, iig. 2 ibid., 130, 131. 8 Ibid., 126. 



362 THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 

7. The State can take cognizance of the inspiration 

AND guidance WHICH THE CHAPLAIN, AN EDUCATED MAN, CAN 

GIVE TO THE EDUCATION OF THE PRISONERS, to the library, and 
other means for their improvement. 

" Out of 1,000 as they stood on the registry," writes Kings- 
mill of Pentonville Prison, London, "15 were liberally edu- 
cated." "845 had attended some sort of school, as childreji, 
for periods averaging about four years. Of these, 347 had re- 
ceived education in schools kept by private persons, 221 in na- 
tional schools, 20 in grammar schools, 92 in Sabbath schools, and 
160 in other kinds. The attainments of these men were not 
equal to their opportunities. More than half could not read 
with understandings or write their own letters; and 758 had no 
knowledge of any rule in arithmetic beyond addition." ^ " The 
convicts who could read with intelligence were readers only of 
the light and trifling productions of the day. Their minds were, 
therefore, like an unweeded garden, in which the useless pre- 
dominated." " There was no thirst for wholesome knowl- 
edge." ^ As to religious education, " children of nine or ten 
years of age in a well-ordered Christian family knew as much as 
the very best informed, with very few exceptions." 

In his Report for 1854, Clay says, "During two years I have 
conversed with 1,088 male prisoners incapable of reading, 41.7 
per cent of the whole number of male prisoners committed ; 
938 male prisoners unable to repeat the Lord's Prayer with any 
approach to accuracy in the words, or a proper comprehension 
of their meaning, 36.3 per cent ; 1,836 male prisoners who could 
not understand the import of the plainest language necessary 
to convey instruction in moral and religious truth, 72.4 per 
cent."^ What he means by "plainest language" is shown in 
the lamentable ignorance described in Clay's letter to Sir. J. S. 
Packington." ^ 

Now, ^''Ignorance is the mother of Vice^ 

1 American prisoners, in education, would rank vastly higher. Most of them have had 
more schooling. Yet, no doubt, prisoners are below the average in good learning and good 
reading. The above statistics, in comparison, suggest the superiority of our common-school 
system, and the benefit of separation of State and Church. It is significant that Chaplain 
Clay's prison observations made him an earnest advocate of national education. . 

2 Kingsmill, 39, 40. 3 Clay's Memoir, 554. * Ibid., 559. 



THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION, ^^t^ 

The chaplain represents and urges forward education of the 
prisoners, secular and religious. 

"Cutting through jungles of difficulties," Clay early (1826) 
established a school and a Sunday school.^ 

Chaplain Speare of Charlestown devotes a section of his 
Report to the " day school," in which he says, — 

"The demand for convict labor, and our straitened accommo- 
dations, have caused a suspension of this prosperous feature of 
my department. When men sign the temperance j^ledge, saying 
that they learned to write at that school," " I regret its discon- 
tinuance. For the past two years I have urged legislative re- 
quirements of a small school, whatever may be the demand for 
labor." 

The Seventh Section of the Report of Wines and Dwight^ 
on Secular Instruction contains interesting statements as to 
the benefits of good books and good reading in a prison. 
The section is prefaced with this anecdote : " A person pass- 
ing through a prison as a visitor was shocked at the profane 
speech of one of the convicts. ' Why do you not have better 
thoughts ? ' he inquired. ' Better thoughts ! ' was the forlorn 
response : ' where shall I get them .'* ' In that startling ques- 
tion, coming to us from the dungeon, coming to us from a felon 
and an outcast, we have the whole philosophy of crime and 
reformation. ' Better thoughts ' are what society should have 
supplied to criminals before they became such, and so have pre- 
vented their fall. ' Better thoughts ' now that they have fallen, 
and are suffering the punishment she has imposed for the breach 
of her laws, are what, by a double bond, she is required to sup- 
ply them, to the end, that, when released from the stern grasp of 
justice, they may go and sin no more." These "better thoughts" 
are found in good books. A good library in prison is a fountain 
of life to thousands. 

An interesting story is given of the foundation of the Prison 
Library at Alton, 111. "Their chaplain, in 1846, congratulated 
the prisoners in the Massachusetts State Prison on their excel- 
lent library. The next day a prisoner told him he and some of 

* Clay's Memoir, 112. 2 pp, 221-239. 



364 THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 

his mates had some books to spare for the prisoners at Alton. 
Public request was made by the warden for any such books. 
The chaplain came next day with a large silk handkerchief to 
take away the books. What was his astonishment to find a 
present of more than four hundred bound volumes ! The silk 
handkerchief would not do -, and the prisoners requested per- 
mission to make boxes to pack the books in."^ 

The chaplain is Teacher as well as Preacher in the prison. 

These reasons make the appointment of chaplains in our 
State institutions not only a legitimate procedure, but a matter 
of exceeding importance to the State and to her wards. 

We now proceed to the third important point ; — 

ONLY ONE CHAPLAIN. 

By this we mean that one person alone, or one person with 
assistants, should hold and exercise the functions which we have 
designated. "You have no curate?" asked Lord Brougham's 
committee of Clay. " No," was the reply. " I may venture to 
say, that, if the separate system is carried more generally into 
effect, a prison calculated to hold two hundred or three hundred 
prisoners will find work for two or three chaplains." " His 
meaning was simply this, that, in his own prison, there was about 
three times as much work [ministrations in the cells] as he could 
get through." It is not said that a chaplain should never have 
assistants ; though, in our American prisons, they are probably 
unnecessary. What is intended is, that only one man should rep- 
resent^ as the head, those interests of which we have spoken. There 
should be one chaplain, as there is one warden and one sur- 
geon. There should not be a second man who holds a chap- 
laincy or quasi chaplaincy, anything which may be called a 
chaplaincy, apart from the one appointed chaplain ; least of all, 
one in any way antagonistic to that one, or who is seeking to 
neutralize his work, or, in the face of all, do a rival work in the 
same line, yet in different fashion, intended to be at variance 
with the first. This is what we think the State, through eyes of 
wisdom, always has discerned, and through eyes of wisdom is 

* Report of Wines and Dwight, 229. 



THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 365 

competent to discern, from the following reasons, why only one 
chaplain is allowable in each institution : — 

1. The State can discern that the analogy of official 

FUNCTIONS IN A PRISON ALLOWS BUT ONE CHAPLAIN. 

The idea of prison official life is, that the various work in the 
institution is divided into departments, with a responsible head 
over each department. The warden, the surgeon, are heads of 
their departments. They were directly appointed by the State. 
They make annual reports to the State. It would not be an in- 
terference to give them subordinate assistants ; but it would be 
to give them rivals, — a rival warden with other ideas of prison- 
discipline, a rival surgeon of another school of medicine. 

The chaplain is likewise an official of the institution. He is 
appointed by the Executive. He reports to him. Analogy re- 
quires, that, in his department, he shall be sole and responsible 
head. 

2. The State takes note, that, in all the general plan 

OF GOOD for the PRISONERS, " RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION, EDU- 
CATION, AND IMPROVEMENT OF THE PRISONERS," — THERE MUST 
BE BUT ONE CHAPLAIN. 

After appointing Napoleon to the command of the army of 
Italy, the Directory were alarmed at their step, and proposed to 
associate with him a colleague. " If you do," said Bonaparte, 
" recall me. One poor commander is better than two good 
ones." In the olden time, the Athenian generals were wise 
enough not to attempt to command together, but in rotation ; 
and so Miltiades was commander at Marathon. One head is 
enough for one body. Considered as a system for the religious 
and educational improvement of prisoners conducted on a plan 
covering, perhaps, years, one chaplain is best. Two chaplains 
means two plans ^ which cannot be wise within a prison's limits. 

3.. The State can take note that one chaplain can do 

ALL which the TRUE OFFICE OF CHAPLAIN DEMANDS. For all 

the purposes designated, to conduct a divine service, to be a fa- 
ther or personal friend, to represent humanity, to represent and 
encourage education, one person is sufficient and satisfactory to 
the State : therefore the State, the only party which has any- 



366' THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 

thing to do with a chaplain, has no reason to appoint or al- 
low a second, or twelve, or twenty. 

4. The State can observe, that, until the present law is 

REPEALED, THE StATE MAKES AN IMPLIED PROMISE TO THE 
CHAPLAIN THAT HE IS TO BE THE ONLY CHAPLAIN, UNIMPEDED IN 

HIS PLANS. " The chaplain shall devote his ivhole tbnc to the re- 
ligious instruction, education, and improvement of the convicts." 
Any man appointed under such laws and regulations would 
consider them an implied promise that he should have free 
scope, and should be unhindered in every thing necessary to 
effect " the religious instruction, education, and improvement 
of the convicts," while alone held responsible for that work. 

5. The State can recall to herself that the natural 

IDEA OF A chaplain, THE TRADITIONAL IDEA, THE LEGAL IDEA, 

SHOWS THAT THERE SHALL BE BUT ONE. The General Statutes 
embody the time-honored as well as the legal conception of this 
office. " The chaplain of the State prison," &c., are the words 
of the statute. ''''The chaplain," — only one is contemplated. 
Again: "The chaplain shall devote his whole time to the reli- 
gious instruction, education, and improvement of the convicts." 
All through this enumeration of duties the word is 'V/t'." Evi- 
dently, therefore, the State and the civil community have from 
time immemorial felt that all which they had in mind as belong- 
ing to that office required that it should be performed by one. 
The State, doubtless, has understood its own idea of a chaplain 
and his work ; and this traditional idea and this legal enact- 
ment ought /lot to be set aside except by direct, specific, unequivocal 
enactmoit of law, that there shall be a rival chaplain. 

6. The State can observe, that so far as she proposes, 

AND IT IS allowable TO HER, TO TOUCH THE RELATIONS OF THE 

SOUL TO God, the ends of the State, and the peace and dis- 
cipline OF THE PRISON, REQUIRE AND PERMIT THAT SHE SHALL 
SIMPLY ALLOW A SERVICE, WHICH, AS A GENERAL EXERCISE, SHALL 

AROUSE ALL SOULS, and awaken general ideas of the divine mercy 
and divine life, but leave to the communings of the prisoner's 
own spirit, or to his private intercourse with some spiritual con- 
fidant, clerical or lay, to answer definitely the question which 



THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION 367 

personal religion puts, " What must / do to be saved ? " The 
State can consistently stop nowhere between these two posi- 
tions, — to have one public divine service, which shall, in a gen- 
eral way, exhort, arouse, awaken, comfort all souls, and afford 
one general channel for the spiritual emotions of all ; or to con- 
duct twelve different services to gratify twelve different constitu- 
encies. Is it not clear as light that the one gejieral appeal to the 
spiritual natu?'e, the one general channel for religious worship, is 
all which a chaplaincy contemplates, or has ever contemplated ? 
May we not go further, and say that the allowing a particular 
denomination to be named in the statutes, to have a separate 
denouii national officer in State institutions, is as glaring a disre- 
gard of American ideas as to the separation of State and Church 
as can be perpetrated ? nay, more, is an invasion of the rights 
of all de7to?ni?iations, who accept, in good faith, the separation of 
State and Church ? 

The State allows the presentation of the general view of God, 
his judgment, his mercy, hope, fear, invitation, illustrated and 
pressed home by the particular mode and manner and second- 
ary opinions of the person whom the State has chosen as wise 
and earnest enough to do it. The State proposes wisely to at- 
tempt no more than this in a public service. She leaves to 
each man to meet the personal question to which that general 
appeal awakens him, by private recourse to those whom he de- 
sires as spiritual confidants. 

Bayard Taylor tells us in pleasant rhyme an incident of 
Balaklava. It was evening, and the men were in camp around 
their fires. Home had been the theme. Perhaps the mail had 
just arrived from distant England. In the glow of that home- 
feeling some one struck up " Annie Laurie," and all, owning the 
feeling that prompted it, joined at once ; and Taylor says, 
reading from the act to the thought, — ' 

" Each heart recalled a different name ; 
But all sang Annie Laurie." 

The general appeal to the spiritual nature is all which the State 
proposes to give channel for in her public divine service in her 



^6S THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 

institutions: she leaves to "each heart" to "recall" all that is 
suggested of its own personal needs and hopes, fears and joys. 
As the State proposes to give opportunity only to this general 
appeal to the soul, but one chaplain is necessary. 

7. The State can also observe, that any ground on 
which there should be more than one chaplain in an 
institution would contravene her necessary and tradi- 
tionary ideas of a chaplain, and her express regula- 
TIONS. 

On what ground is it imagined there can be two or twelve 
chaplains ? There can be no other ground than difference of 
faith. We claim, is the demand, a chaplain, because we do not 
agree in the worship of the chapel. That claim is counter to 
the State's idea of a chaplain, — that he is one who is to hold 
a general religious service ; counter to the regulations, which 
read, '■''No attejnpt shall be made to teach any sectarian belief to the 
convicts^ Therefore a sectarian chaplain, under law, is an impos- 
sibility. If the chapel service is fairly conforming to the State's 
idea of a general service, and an ecclesiastic makes objection 
that that service does not suit him, and therefore claims a chap- 
laincy, the g7'-oimd of the claim kills the petition. " No sectarian 
preaching," sa3''s the State. " My petition is on the ground that 
my services are denominational." That claim bars your en- 
trance, until the State shall go down to the foundations, change 
her traditional idea — the only one congruous in a free State — 
of a general chaplain, and with a revolutionary pen write her 
statutes over again. 

The State knows nothing of sects. 

A second chaplain, unless petitioning to be an assistant of 
the first, must claim his place on illegal grounds^ and against the 
State's historic idea of the chaplaincy. 

8. The State takes note that any ground on which 
there should be more than one chaplain would necessi- 
tate a dozen chaplains or more. 

If the ground for appointing a chaplain and divine service 
were the churches represented in a State institution, then must 
there be as many chaplains as churches. " Then," to use the 



THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 369 

words of Chaplain Speare's report, "our Jews must" "have a 
synagogue furnished them; then the High Church Episcopalian 
must have a Sabbath service performed by some one in the true 
apostolic descent, and clad in all becoming vestments ; then the 
Chinese must have a joss-house set up within prison-walls, duly 
appointed, and fragrant with burning incense." ■'■ Is it true that 
twelve chaplains and twelve services comport with the State's 
idea and need of a chaplain ? Is not all this claim on the erro- 
neous notion that a prison is a place with all the liberty and privi- 
lege of the outside world ? 

If the ground on which a chaplain is appointed were the reli- 
gious preferences of the individual, fifty chaplains would hardly 
suffice. Indeed, to meet the demands of an ever-fluctuating 
community like a prison, the balloting for chaplains must be a 
common occurrence within the walls. No ! " Positive provis- 
ion," says the same report, " to gratify every man's religious 
preferences, has not been made, and never can be. The prison is 
not administered for that purpose." 

It is indeed custo?Jiary in State institutions on both sides of the 
Atlantic to allow individuals^ at proper times., to see privately such 
religious advisers as they may designate; but this is very different 
from a chaplain and a public service. There must be, therefore, 
either one chaplain or twelve, unless you say. One general 
chaplain ; but., considering the political importa?tce of on^ particu- 
lar church, the State must yield to their pertinacious demand. 
Has it come to that .'' Do we live in America, a free State .? or 
in Spain? ''^ Ubi gentium sumus 2 ''^ The State is no respecter 
of persons ; knows no church, no party ; knows, therefore, no 
ground of favoring one or another, no ground between appoint- 
ing one chaplain or twenty. Any call for more than one 
chaplain proceeds on an entire misconception of what a State 
chaplain is. 

9. The State can observe the probable collision be- 
tween TWO chaplains sooner or later, even were both legally 
appointed; the certain collision, 'if the State chaplain is a man 
of proper self-respect, and has true sense of his office, as long 

1 Report of 1876. 



37 o THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 

as another, without law, attempts to enter the prison, to inter- 
fere with his department, to act as ^?/;^i"/-chaplain. 

10. The State can observe the probable effect on the 

PRISON-OFFICERS OF TWO RIVAL CHAPLAINS. They W^ll hold 

eitlier witli tlie one or tlie other. They may be tempted to do 
things for the ^//<2«-chapIain, representing a large religious and 
political constituency, which they ought not to do, which would 
irritate a State chaplain representing only the State. 

11. The State can forecast the probable and necessary 
ANTAGONISM AMONG THE PRISONERS from the presence of two 
religious parties led by two chaplains. 

"I am thankful," writes John Clay, "that my isolated position 
as a gaol-chaplain saves me from the danger of religious parti- 
sanship." " If the energy which is wasted on these miserable 
controversies were combined into one great crusade against 
vice and ignorance, it would change the fate of England and 
the world." ^ 

12. The State can note and deprecate the probable 
effect, on all the objects which she holds of value con- 
cerning THE prisoners CONSIDERED AS HER WARDS, OF THAT 
CONSTANT EXCITEMENT AND IRRITATION AMONG THE PRISONERS 

which must arise at the spectacle of two hostile religious teach- 
ers. It is believed no one can fail to see that this must be inju- 
rious to the formation of such a moral character as the State 
desires to form in her wards before sending them out again into 

the world. 

" The Spirit, like a peaceful clove, 
Flies from the realms of noise and strife." 

Need we further multiply considerations, patent to the State, 
why only one chaplain is possible in each institution? 

We gather up the results of this discussion in these few final 
words : — 

I. The State appoints chaplain and divine service from her own 
stajidpoint. Nor does she do it co72strai?ied, but of her own op- 
tion. She can abolish the chaplaincy, if her ends demand : 
she can have one, and only one, if that subserves her purposes. 

1 Clay's Memoir, 577. ' . 



THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION 371 

2. 21ie State does fiot appoint a chaplain and divine service at 
the request of her wards that she will satisfy and gratify their 
religious preferences. 

3. The State does not appoint a chaplain to gratify what is called 
a^htirch, or organization of any kind. 

4. So far as a chaplain and divi7ie services are for spiritual pur- 
poses^ the State, according to her historic and legal idea, attempts 
only a general chaniiel for religious appeal and worship. She 
never has gone further. A new departure, revolutionary indeed, 
could alone change her traditional idea. The State furnishes a 
spiritual " commons," not a table d''h6te. Accordingly, such men 
have always been recognized as model chaplains who stirred 
the religious nature of all. Such men as Father Taylor, Bri- 
daine, Father Mathew, Francis Eden as sketched by Charles 
Reade, Mr. Moody, Father Mason, Phineas Stowe, — these large 
catholic men, who could not pause to be polemic on a small 
point, — these would be chaplains indeed. 

Spontaneously and earnestly my chaplain friend of the flag- 
ship exclaimed to me, " For the sake of all that's good, say, if 
you write on chaplaincies, that a chaplain who is denominational 
cuts off his fingers, so far as good work is concerned. For a 
year, they didn't know what was my denomination." 

Just as soon as any man puts any particular name in place of 
"Annie Laurie," the charm of the song is gone to all. 

One of the most amusing things in the literature of chaplain- 
cies is the resignation of Rev. Walter Balfour, quoted by Gideon 
Haynes in his interesting " Prison Incidents." Mr. Balfour, it 
seems, in 1808, had changed his views on a comparatively insig- 
nificant article of faith ; and he hastens to write thi-s note, yield- 
ing up his office : — 

" Gentlemen, — As a change of sentiment has taken place with me on 
the subject of infant-baptism, and not knowing but this may form some 
objection to the continuance of my services at the State prison, I think it 
my duty to intimate to you my desire to discontinue them. If desired, I 
have no objection to supply for a Sabbath or two, until you may conveniently 
provide yourselves with some other person. 

"Walter Balfour." 



372 THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 

In the slightly slang expression sometimes used by a lady- 
friend, " This is too-funny for anything." Had this gentleman, 
then, supposed, that, in the eye of the State, his fitness for the 
chaplaincy had consisted in his views on the minor point to 
which he refers ? If so, he never had been a chaplain of that 
prison in any large, true idea of that office, or in the State idea 
of that office, 

5. Ecclesiastics who ask for additional chaplaincies, on the 
ground that they belong to a particular church not reached by 
the State-appointed chaplain, show on the face of their petitiojt 
cause why they can7iot he allowed, legally or by civil right, to 
enter a State institution as recognized chaplains ; ecclesiastics 
who claim entrance to State institutions on the ground that they 
have a large constituency there, give reason to the State, on the 
face of their petition, for questioning their fitness to be shep- 
herds of souls j ecclesiastics who claim that their church has 
supreme visible jurisdiction, divino jure, everywhere, and has a 
divine right to pass, visibly and by ministers, all State barriers 
and walls, by the face of that claim cut themselves off from 
chaplaincies, which are of the State'' s commission for purposes 
allowed and permitted of the State, within its sovereign sphere. 
" He that climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and 
a robber." 

" He who would scale a wall to go where he has no 
right would lay flat that wall if his power were equal 
to his will." 

6. Any law regarding State Institutions and Religion, to be 
permanently satisfactor}^, must be, first of all, EXPLiciT; its 
terms not permitting quarrel or subingression.-^ It must, further, 
provide for an unsectarian " divine service," a chaplain, and 
only one chaplain ; it should not only not allow any thing detri- 
mental to discipline, but should not depart from the analogy of 
official functions, one officer of a kind to an institution, unhindered 
in his department, and responsible for its success ; it must, a 
least in all penal, cor7'ective, and reformatory institutions, whose 
inmates have become the wards of the State through defaidt of 

* Vernacular, Sneaking in. Subingression is historical in Massachusetts. 



THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 2,1 Z 

character^ require the presence of all inmates at divine service, 
though none should be compelled to take active part in the 
same ; it should, as in the past, make full provision for private 
visits, and private visits ojily, at proper times, of other religious 
friends, lay or clerical, at the request of the prisoner himself. 

7. The State should exercise the largest wisdom and the 
greatest care in the selection of chaplains for her institutions. 

The large number and the great moral needs of her wards, 
and the beneficent purposes she has towards them, exact this. 

The State should select chaplains on the same principles on 
which men of large common sense select agents, the merchant 
his clerk, the corporation its foreman ; namely, one the least 
objectionable, one heartily entering into the employer's plans, 
one eminently fitted for the work, one who is likely to improve 
in efficiency by experience. 

It is evident, then, that, at the outset, the State must rule out 
of the candidacy all who cannot enter the chaplaincy with a 
sufficient sympathy with her view of the ends to be secured. 
She cannot admit a Jesuit, who will not recognize the State as 
"independent" and "sovereign," who will not take oath of 
allegiance to the State ; nor can she allow as chaplains those 
whose thoughts are mainly bent on bringing the religious life 
which may be awakened within the prison into connection with, 
and subjection to, a particular church-system without. All this 
is implied in the idea of a State chaplain and a " divine service," 
" unsectarian." 

The candidacy of good men earnestly attached to particular 
religious systems is by no means, therefore, excluded. It is in- 
teresting, however, to observe how one who is appointed chap- 
lain is recognized as set apart for an unsectarian work. My 
naval chajDlain friend said, as if lamenting the separation of the 
chaplain from the sympathy of religious bodies, "' As soon as a 
man becomes a chaplain, his church forgets him." This remark 
is significant of the peculiarly unsectarian popular idea of the 
chaplaincy. Yet, as we have said, men earnestly attached to 
particular religious systems are not excluded from candidacy. 
There are Catholics who are catholic. Father Mathew, the 



3;4 THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 

great Apostle of Temperance, was catholic enough for a chap- 
lain. Bridaine, as described by both Carron and Bungener, had 
that largeness of heart which would have admirably fitted him 
for such a sphere. Indeed, even in those early days (1725), 
half a century before Howard, we find this noble man thought- 
ful of prisoners, preaching sermons in their behalf.-^ He went 
more than once to comfort Protestants condemned to death for 
religion's sake. His biographer says, " How many prisoners in 
detention for debt, quarrels, or for other misdemeanors, who 
seemed to him to merit clemency, have found in Brydayne a 
father and a savior ! " ^ The late Father Dougherty of Cam- 
bridge, if private report and public encomium are true, had that 
catholicity, sympathy, and efiiciency which would have made him 
a worthy chaplain. 

If one thinks that the Catholic Church would not allow one 
of her ministers to continue a course of unsectarian ministra- 
tions for a term of years, he does not reckon so great as we the 
adaptability of the Romish Church, which would gladly have its 
ministers in places of influence, even if shorn of some of their 
activities. The Jesuits have always acted thus, and in China, 
as we have seen, even allowed external idolatry in order to 
secure and hold converts. But we see no reason why, in all 
honesty, Pere Bridaine and Father Mathew should refuse to 
conduct a service in which they should be limited to prayer, 
praise, reading of the Scriptures, and the sermon. But should 
ministers of this church insist. We are nothing if not secta- 
rian, then the State has no parley with them, but, whatever 
their abounding merits, must summarily bar them out. If one 
cannot conform to the rules of the arena, he must keep out of 
it. For the State knows nothing of sects, nor of sectarian teach- 
ings, ex'cept so far as they thrust themselves upon her notice as 
an mseparable part of a man, and so excluding him from the 
office. 



1 Carron, Vie de Brydayne, 47. All English authorities spell Bridaine, Bungener also ; 
his biographer, the abbe Carron, Brydayne ; his epitaph, as quoted by him, " Hie jacet Jaco- 
bus Brydayne," &c. 

2 Vie de Brydayne, 184. 



THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 375 

But it may be thought that all mmisters are sectarian. Not 
in the popular, nor, indeed, in any true philosophical sense. 
The catholic is he who holds the truths held by all (xr^iiO-' olov). 
In unrevealed truth, a man is catholic who holds the great truths 
as held by devout thinkers all the world over. As a believer in 
a special revelation, he is catholic who holds the great truths 
taught by the Founder of that religion in the way they are held 
by the body universal, and in such a spirit that he can hold them 
with all ; namely, in St. Augustine's noble words, " In necessariis, 
unitas ; in dubiis, libertas ; in omnibus, caritas," — "In essen- 
tials, unity; in doubtful, liberty; in all, charity." A sectarian, 
on the contrary, is one of a sed^ or cut-off (seco, to cut). He 
belongs to a section of the great body of believers. Disregard- 
ing the great truths which are believed " semper, ubique, et ab 
omnibus," — "always, everywhere, and by all," — he foists into 
prominence the dubia^ or " doubtful " things, and, with others 
who agree to cut off from the main body on those secondary 
matters, he becomes a sectarist. He thinks with a sect, acts 
with a sect, and largely, as a partisan, for a sect. In dealing 
with men, he meets them primarily with his special doctrines, 
which, nevertheless, are not the essential doctrines. That is a 
sectarian. 

We do not account it sectarian for one in special time and 
place and company to explain and expound special doctrines, if 
this is done with catholic distinction between the necessaria and 
the dubia. 

Nor, which bears on our present subject, do we account a 
man sectarian who forces home catholic truths with appeals 
drawn from special ideas believed by himself alone. Were 
Archbishop Williams invited to preach before the Evangelical 
Alliance a sermon on Persuasives to the Lord's Supper, we 
would not deem it sectarian to name as one head, one persua- 
sive, that the Lord Jesus' body was actually before us, at the 
Table. But if, on the other hand, he were invited to deliver an 
address before the assembled ministry, without any understand- 
ing that he was to present his own peculiar doctrines, we should 
consider it sectarian were he to present a discussion of the doc- 



376 THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 

trine of Transubstantiation. In the first case, the purpose was 
catholic, — to induce to come to the Lord's Supper. That cath- 
olic purpose governed all the special arguments which he might 
present. In the latter case, his aim would be sectarian, — to 
make us believe as a section of the Church on a minor tenet. 
One would not necessarily be a sectarian who preached of " tem- 
perance, righteousness, and judgment," because, in appeal, he 
used his own peculiar beliefs of the near approach of judgment 
at a specified time. But to teach that doctrine as opposed to the 
prevailing idea would be sectarian. No minister or chaplain is 
sectarian who presents the general truths of judgment, merc}^, 
righteousness, brotherly kindness, " the love of God, the grace 
of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the communion of the Holy 
Spirit," although he may enforce his appeals by doctrines held 
by only a section. If his purpose is catholic, his preach'uig is 
catholic. In this sense, — and we believe we have only explained 
the popular thought of the meaning of the word, — there are 
hundreds, thousands, of men earnestly attached to particular doc- 
trines who are catholic, and whose preaching is catholic. It 
matters not that their incidental utterances, and the manner of 
their appeal, show them to be Methodist, Episcopal, Papist : if 
their purpose is predoininant, to save souls by presenting the 
justice and mercy of God, men consider them unsectarian. A 
catholic purpose makes one a catholic preacher. 

The State, then, is to select one for chaplain on the ground 
that he is a good man, and efficient in doing and securing good. 
From all the good men, of whatever religious order, who are 
before her view, she is to select one who is pre-eminently fitted to 
be such a chaplain as we have described him,- — an eminent 
representative of goodness, hope, sympathy, and divine love. 
Thomas Starr King, we recall, said that not every minister could 
be a chaplain. The largest measure of vital goodness, the 
largest and most Christlike love, the most potent force to draw 
down upon men " the love of God, the grace of the I^ord Jesus 
Christ, the communion of the Holy Spirit," and to move men 
with divine knowledge and motives and persuasives, and these 
joined with the most thorough understanding of men and the 



THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 377 

most roundabout common sense, the heartiest sympathy with 
men, are not too much to bring to this important office. He 
should be an Israel, "having power with God and with men;" 
one who is "prevailing." 

The State should, moreover, select one for this office who 
possesses what Bushnell so happily called " the Talent of 
Growth." Entering the chaplaincy at thirty, with the crudity of 
youth gone, and somewhat of maturity gained, he should be one 
who, by more careful observation, wider reading, profounder 
insight and reflection concerning prisons and prisoners, criminals 
and crime, would gain, year by year, larger conceptions of his 
office, greater ability to meet his people's deepest needs, their sins 
and sorrows. He must be an enthusiast, one who loves to learn 
about prisoners, emphatically the Prisoner's Friend. " Nihil " 
carcerei "a me alienum esse puto," — "Nothing concerning the 
prisoner count I foreign to myself." Advancing as rapidly in 
divine knowledge, and growth in personal goodness, as in knowl- 
edge of men, and how to meet them to do them good, retaining 
his early enthusiasm, and increasing in the love with which he 
began his career, he should be one who would ripen, not wither, 
and, valuable at thirt3^-five, should be indispensable at forty-five. 
Such a chaplaincy as that of John Clay, of forty years, is as 
blessed to the institution in its hallowed ministrations and 
maturing usefulness as it is beneficial to the vState in the re- 
corded results of his ripe experience. Choosing such a one, 
who is willing to become for a score of years the Prisoners' 
Pastor, to the exclusion of all other pastoral ambitions, the State 
should make it reasonably certain, that, unless he disappoint 
her hopes in his service, he should be guaranteed opportunity 
for a long and beneficent and uninterrupted career of ever- 
ripening usefulness. 

Thus, in conclusion, the State, which has equal aversion, on 
the one hand, to connection with Church, and, on the other 
hand, to sects and the strife of sects, can yet, without transcend- 
ing her sphere, open her prison-windows to permit that on her 
wards within may fall some of that glory which shone from the 
skies in the darkness of another night, when angelic visitants — 



378 THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION. 

celestial, and not sectarian — brought the dawn of heaven to 
earth, and sang that hymn which is the harbinger of the univer- 
sal Hope of sinners : " Glory to God in the highest, on earth 
peace, good-will toward men." 

What should enter the prison is not the formulated dogma 
and the articulated creed, but that hope of the divine mercy. 
That cheering light can nowhere be more gladdening and 
efficient than in a prison. Even the most criminal and imbruted 
may prove in themselves " The Forces of a Sunbeam." 

What should penetrate the prison-wall is the pure sunlight, 
unrefracted, undiscolored by painted glass of sect, — the simple, 
full ray, — " the Light that lighteth every man that cometh into 
the world," — " unto which " all " would do well to take heed, 
as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, 
and the day star arise in their hearts.^' 



*' The ivy in a dungeon grew, 

Unfed by rain, uncheered by dew : 
The pallid leaflets only drank 
Cave-moistures foul and odors dank. 

But through the dungeon's grating high 
There fell a sunbeam from the sky : 
It slept upon the grateful floor 
In silent gladness evermore. 

The ivy felt a tremor shoot 
Through all its fibres to the root ; 
It felt the light ; it saw the ray ; 
It strove to blossom into day ; 

It grew, it crept, it pushed, it clomb : 
Long had the darkness been its home ; 
But well it knew, though veiled in night, 
The goodness and the joy of light. 

It reached the beam, it thrilled, it curled ; 
It blessed the warmth that cheers the world ; 
It rose towards the dungeon-bars ; 
It looked upon the light and stars ; 



THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND REIIGION. 379 

It felt the life of bursting spring ; 

It heard the happy sk3'lark sing ; 

It caught the breath of morns and eves, 

And wooed the swallow to its leaves. 

By rains and dews and sunshine fed, 
Over the outer wall it spread ; 
And, in the daybeam waving free. 
It grew into a steadfast tree. 

Wouldst know- the moral of the rhyme ? 
Behold the heavenly light, and climb ! 
To every dungeon comes a ray 
Of God's interminable day," 

" For God so loved the world ! " ^ 

* Rev. Newman Hall : Sermon on John iii. 16. 



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